Burgess: Property tax losses

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The Miami-Dade County property appraiser released its preliminary tax rollinformation Monday, with all four taxinv jurisdictions – fire library, the unincorporated area and Miami-Dade overallk – seeing a decline. The countywide decrease comparing preliminaryt tax numbers from year to year shows a 9percenty decrease, or a total of $22.56 billion.” “These losses would have been worse if not for new construction that was added to the property tax roll as of Jan. 1,” Countyh Manager George Burgess said in a memo sent tocountyg commissioners. North Bay Village took the biggesft hit, down 20.2 percent from 2008 Homestead sawan 18.
2 percenft decline, followed by Normandy Shores, down 17.5 and Aventura which was down 17.3 percent. Goldenm Beach and the tiny city of Islandia sawno change. Medleyg saw a 1.5 percent drop while Biscayne Park saw a 4perceng decline. Click for the full list. Staffers reviewecd property tax rolls going back to 1985 and foundc that 1993 saw taxable value shrinkby 2.9 percent, or $1.9 “Even in 2008, when we absorbed the impacg of doubling the homestead exemption from $25,0009 to $50,000, the property tax roll was relativelt flat,” Burgess explained in the memo. “These lossese in property tax roll valuesare unprecedented.
” Burgessd warned of a lot more pain on the using the last two years as a barometere of what is coming. For the seconde consecutive year, Miami-Dade faced a $200 milliomn budget gap in the last fiscal Core services were kept intact bytighteningg belts, but assuming the same tax rate adopted for the estimated ad valorem revenues for fiscalo year 2009-10 would shrink by $174.1 according to the memo. Taking into account the impacgt of normal inflationary growth and theeconomic slowdown, combined with the non ad valorem revenue results in property tax subsidized operationas facing a budget gap of $350 million to $400 million, Burgesds said.
“We are working diligently to prepare a proposed budgegt forFY [fiscal 2009-10 that to the extent preserves essential services and minimizes service impacts to our he wrote in the memo. “However, closinyg a budgetary gap of this size will requirs some verydifficult decisions.”