City Budget Remains at Rollback

As residents and businesses begin to rebuild from the COVID economy, the Key West City Commission, in a unanimous vote Monday evening, approved a budget that will not raise taxes. The proposed budget for fiscal year 2020/2021 has millage rate that meets rollback. Rollback tax rate is the rate that generates the same amount of money as the previous year.

The final adopted ad valorem tax general municipal millage rate is set at 2.0858 mills, which translates to $2.0858 per thousand dollars of assessed property value.

Despite some severe expenses and revenue losses due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the City worked diligently to find a way to craft a budget that does not raise the tax rate. The effort includes reducing personnel costs by freezing positions and providing no pay raises. In addition, the budget provides lower reserve funds than the City usually retains. Generally, the budget contains enough reserve funding to keep city services operating for between 72 and 92 days during an emergency. In the budget that begins October 1, the city has provided 63 days of reserve funding. During fiscal 2020/2021 the City’s goal is to compile another 8 days worth of reserve funding so that, according to Finance Director Mark Finigan, the fund balance will be back to the minimum end of the scale.

Early in the process, the commission discussed a proposal that would raise ad valorem taxes by as much as 3 percent. But serious belt-tightening in all departments resulted in successfully staying at rollback.