Plans to balance next year’s county budget with ‘rainy day’ reserves and projections of multimillion-dollar deficits in the future cited as major concerns
During the board’s regular meeting on July 8, in Venice, Sarasota County Commissioner Tom Knight won full support from his colleagues to direct County Administrator Jonathan Lewis to talk with the county’s constitutional officers about the board’s desire to have them try to trim their budgets for the 2026 fiscal year.
Chair Joe Neunder volunteered to join Lewis for those discussions.
Additionally, at Knight’s request, the commissioners will hold another budget workshop on Aug. 19, following their return from their annual summer break. Knight indicated his hope that, by that time, the constitutional officers will have agreed to pare their budgets.
Last week, after their two full days of budget presentations from the county departments they control, as well as the constitutional officers — including Sheriff Kurt A. Hoffman and former county commissioner and new county Tax Collector Mike Moran — the board members told Lewis they did not believe they would need to discuss the budget again on Aug. 19.
However, Knight explained on July 8, he had found himself left with concerns after last week’s workshops.
The county budget as proposed for the 2026 fiscal year will be higher by 20% than the current budget, he pointed out, even though “we saw a historic increase last year.
“What is most disturbing to me,” he continued, “is that we’ll be into our reserves now.”
He was alluding to budget projections that Lewis and Deputy County Administrator and Chief Financial Management Officer Steve Botelho showed the board on July 1, which included the necessity of using county “rainy day reserve money” to balance the 2026 fiscal year budget. Moreover, the software budget model that county staff created years ago — which Lewis long has referenced as possibly the best in the state — indicated the expectation of budget shortfalls in the 2028, 2029 and 2030 fiscal years.
For FY 2028, the projected shortfall as of March was $13,438,157; for FY 2029, $28,678,926.
This year, the same slide showed, the county has $63 million in what officially is called the 30-60 Day Economic Uncertainty Fund. The amount drops to $18 million in FY 2026 and to $5 million for each successive fiscal year through 2030.
The slide notes that the best practice cited by the Government Finance Officers Association (GFOA) for an Economic Uncertainty Fund is 60 days of operating revenue. The $63 million this year is slightly below that, the slide indicates.
In years past, commissioners have pointed to the need to try to maintain as high an amount as possible in that fund, even though county policy also calls for a separate “pot” to hold enough money to ensure that the county could operate for 75 days in the event of a disaster in whose aftermath the county was unable to receive any revenue.
During the July 1 and 2 budget discussions, Knight did make it clear that he is worried about falling home prices in the county — especially, he said, as a recent Wall Street Journal article had identified Sarasota among Florida communities in that situation. Cape Coral was in the figurative spotlight in that article, as it was identified as having the “Worst Housing Market in America.”
Further last week, Knight noted the lower rise in the county’s property value this year. As The Sarasota News Leader reported in its July 4 issue, documents that Sarasota County Property Appraiser Bill Furst and his staff released before the state’s July 1 deadline showed the revised property values for the county’s local governments put the county’s uptick this year at 6%. That was based on the latest determination of value compared with the 2024 certified value of the property.
However, using a different 2024 value included in the Property Appraiser’s Office reports, county staff has put the uptick at 5.8%.
Yet, Knight reminded his colleagues on July 8, “We’re not in a recession.” No pandemic is underway, either, he added.
No efforts to rein in expenses
Last week, Knight told his colleagues on July 8, “Not one time — that I can recall — did I hear one presenter [of a budget for FY 2026] talk about efforts to rein in the spending,” defer costs, or try to achieve efficiencies in operations, in an effort to reduce his or her proposed budget.
“That just means higher taxes to our citizens,” Knight continued. Add in the various fees that the county charges — such as garbage collection fees and stormwater assessments, he said — and the result is “death by a thousand cuts for these people.”
He likened the county’s spending plan for FY 2026 to “running up my credit card [debt], and I don’t want to do that.”
Knight added, “I’m confident that staff can come back with some ideas.” While noting that he was involved with crafting the Sheriff’s Office budget for the 12 years he led that agency, Knight said he is not expert on county budget issues.
Knight also stressed that the board’s focus in regard to spending should be “needs versus wants, which typically means we need to make sure public health, safety and welfare is taken care of.”
Then he raised the prospect of discussions with the county’s constitutional officers in an effort to try to persuade them to reduce their budgets. He pointed, for examples, to their employee “pay scales” and “deferring new programs.”
Traditionally, of all the constitutional officers’ budgets, the one that the Sheriff’s Office presents each year takes a greater percentage of county General Fund revenue than any other.
The General Fund is the account that pays for operations of county departments that do not generate operating revenue of their own, as well as those of most of the constitutional officers. All of the county’s property tax revenue goes into the General Fund, along with other revenue, such as funds that the state shares with the county and gas tax revenue.
This year, the Sheriff’s Office’s proposed budget represents nearly 10% of the overall, tentative proposed FY 2026 county budget of $2,517,024,837, as shown in slides presented to the board last week. As the News Leader has reported, Sheriff Kurt A. Hoffman told the commissioners on July 2 that he is seeking $225,451,927.
Another county staff slide that was part of the July 1-2 master budget workshops document — prepared by county staff — put the increase at 13%, compared to the Sheriff’s Office budget for this fiscal year. Hoffman told the commissioners that the rise was about 12%, by the time that grants the agency had received were factored into the total.
Yet, Tax Collector Mike Moran’s proposed 2026 fiscal year budget was more than double the Sheriff’s Office change: 27%.
The Tax Collector’s Office typically operates on the fees that it collects. The Florida Department of Revenue has to approve its budget, as Moran and his predecessor, Barabra Ford-Coates, have pointed out.
During his July 1 budget presentation, Moran emphasized, “We are a deep, concerning outlier … the only [tax collectors’ office in the state] on the software platform that we’re on.”
The expense of the new set-up, as he put it, will be $2.8 million, plus a fee of $675,000 a year. He has been negotiating with the company that will provide the platform — which he did not name — to spread the cost of the technology over three fiscal years, he said, “to give some relief to the cash flow.”
Moran also cautioned the commissioners that they should expect a far smaller return of funds to the county than Ford-Coates had been providing during the decades that she was tax collector.
During her June 2024 budget presentation to the County Commission, Ford-Coates reported that, because of the efficiency of her staff, her office’s cost per capita was the lowest of all tax collectors in the state.
She added that she anticipated her staff members would collect approximately $29 million in fees in 2024 for the services they provide on behalf of the state and the county government. Thus, she estimated she would return to the county approximately $19 million of her office’s overall revenue that year. “If this were the private sector,” she pointed out, “we would call it ‘profit.’ ”
For the 2023 fiscal year, Ford-Coates reported that her office had returned a record $17.8 million in excess fees to the taxing districts, including $16.3 million to the County Commission.
Moran defeated Ford-Coates in the November 2024 General Election.
‘We all run on conservative values’
During the County Commission budget workshops last week, County Administrator Lewis reported that the overall increase from FY 2025 to FY 2026 for the departments over which the County Commission has control had been put at 3.7%. The figure representing that higher amount, in the relevant slide, was $5,634,754.
Last year, after the commissioners directed Lewis to lower the county’s millage rate for this fiscal year, they also asked him to talk with the constitutional officers about trying to pare their requests. None of the constitutional officers did so.
Tax Collector Moran was still on the County Commission at that time.
“The biggest [issue] that hit me last week,” Knight told his colleagues on July 8, “was technology. Technology’s moving so fast,” he continued, “that I think everybody going their own way is extremely expensive in all these different budgets.”
Along with Moran, Sheriff Hoffman talked of plans to pursue the use of new technology in the 2026 fiscal year.
Yet, Knight pointed out on July 8, “We all run on conservative values.”
Then he proposed the Aug. 19 budget workshop.
In the meantime, he said — appearing to allude again to the constitutional officers — “I think that we need to have that difficult dialogue.”
Knight did acknowledge, “It’s hard to bring these things up when you’re friends with everybody. … [We need] to have the courage to say, ‘We can’t do that’ ” with aspects of the constitutional officers’ budgets.
Commissioner Mark Smith was the first of the other board members to address Knight’s remarks.
“I just wanted to give my support for that,” Smith said. “The heavy lift, I believe, is with the constitutional officers” instead of county departments. He would like to have County Administrator Lewis talk with the constitutional officers, Smith added.
“I agree we’re heading in the wrong direction, and we’re spending money that we’re not going to have, and we’re on a track that’s not slowing down,” Smith said.
The commissioners really need to address the issues now, he added, instead of waiting another year to do so.
When Knight made the motion to hold another budget workshop on Aug. 19, Smith seconded it.
Chair Neunder noted that Knight also is seeking the administrative staff conversations with the constitutional officers “to quote unquote try to sharpen their pencils,” as Knight had put it.
“This is good discussion,” County Administrator Lewis told the commissioners. He did ask that the board members provide any specific direction they feel he should have before he talks with the constitutional officers.
Lewis also noted that he and his staff “are always looking at [county department spending plans]. Just because we came in at under 4%,” he continued, efforts are underway to reduce the amount of money that would come out of the General Fund. “I do think our [departments’ budget totals] will go down between now and the [Aug. 19 workshop].”
Knight acknowledged that the constitutional officers do not sit through the entire budget presentations, as the commissioners do each year. The very first day, he added, “within the first two hours, the red flags were up for me.”
Knight did point out, “We can only control ourselves and what we ask [Lewis] to do.”
Perhaps Lewis could provide those General Fund budget slides to the constitutional officers, Knight suggested.
Commissioner Teresa Mast proposed that Lewis discuss with the constitutional officers the fact that Lewis asked county department directors to keep their proposed overall budget increase to no more than 4%. “It helps to know the boundaries that we’re trying to play within,” she added. They could look at their budgets in light of the 4% restriction for county departments, Mast indicated.
“I agree with that,” Knight responded.
Turning to Lewis, Knight added, “You can kind of give them a target” and then learn their responses, which Lewis could, in turn, convey to the commissioners.