Council City approved new property tax rate.
Millage is the tax rate used to calculate your ad valorem taxes. One mil equals $ 1 for every $ 1,000 of taxable property value. Millage rates are set each year by the taxing authorities you pay. Your Total Millage Rate is the total of all taxing authority millages. On Wednesday July 6th, at a special meeting, the Council City leaders met to approve the proposed property tax rate for the 2011-2012 fiscal year. The proposal was to decrease the rate, thus the rate of the previous year 2.447 would drop to 2.4376. At the second and last public hearing, the City Council approved the millage rate of 2.4376 mills, which is 0% higher than the rolled back rate to balance the General Fund for the Fiscal year 2011-2012. The motion to approve it was made by Vice Mayor Di Pietro and Councilman Cabrera seconded the motion. The public opinion led to initiating a discussion in the Council with councilman Boria requesting to reduce the millage rate even more, by 5%. Boria’s proposal was based on the results of a personal communication sent to residents in which they were asked simply, “if they wanted to lower the millage rate”. It must be clarified that during that communication, nothing was mentioned about what measures should be taken to achieve and/or how it would impact the city and the quality of its services.
Mayor Bermudez was clear in emphasizing that taxes collected are mainly for the payment of services to residents and city maintenance. “The city has no espensive pension or retirement plans , but it does have a deficit in infrastructure, it would be unfair to ask constituents for a special assesmeng in the coming months simply because the fundamentals aspects were not considered.” The basic concern must be police, parks, roads and the requirement to have money in the bank for emergencies. We should seek for mantaining quality of life at lower costs but minimizing negative effects. “Vice Mayor Di Pietro indicated that months ago they had held work meetings open to the public in which it would have been important and valuable to consider the proposal by Councilman Boria, which he was grateful for, but being in the final stage, it was no longer appropriate.This is mainly because of the number of revisions and changes that had already been considered, and therefore it was impossible to start from scratch again.
Councilwoman Rodriguez applauded the efforts of Boria Coulcilman but that they had to respect the process steps. She shared the initiative of Mayor in creating a committee of residents to unite and work on an initiative that will meet all expectations of quality of service and tax rate. Councilman Cabrera explained the importance of managing information, most residents do not know that only about 12% of property taxes paid stay at Doral, the rest goes to other destinations, so a Reduction of 5% in the millage rate would not have that big an impact on each household but it will in the city. Money is important for projects that benefit the community and savings are always important.
