Furst had expressed concerns about aged program and the need to be accurate with annual tax roll
After learning recently that county regulations would allow them to use General Government Impact Fee revenue to pay for the system, the Sarasota County commissioners unanimously approved the purchase of new software for the Sarasota County Property Appraiser’s Office, with the payments to be spread over three years.
The action came during their regular meeting on Jan. 13, following exchanges with Chief Deputy Property Appraiser Brian Loughrey, who reported that Property Appraiser Bill Furst had had to attend a continuing education program conducted that day by the staff of the Florida Department of Revenue.
That department formally approves Furst’s budget each year, though the money comes out of county revenue.
As The Sarasota News Leader has reported, Furst explained to the board members on Dec. 16, 2025 that the sale of the company that produced the software his staff uses to produce the annual tax roll had left him without support services for it.
However, he pointed out, key former employees of that company were working for a different firm, Vision. Following a procurement process, Furst continued, he had been able to negotiate a deal with Vision to pay for the new software over three years. Moreover, he said, the former Thomson Reuters employees who wrote the coding for his existing software would be able to keep his program running until the new software is ready for use.
After his December 2025 presentation, commissioners expressed frustration that Furst had not made them aware of the situation until after they approved the current fiscal year budget after two public hearings in September 2025. Therefore, it appeared at that time that the money for the purchase would have to come out of the General Fund, which county Office of Financial Management staff had pointed out in August 2025 was projected to have shortfalls starting in the 2028 fiscal year.
The General Fund contains all of the property tax revenue, plus revenue from a number of other sources, including money that the state shares with the county. The General Fund pays for the expenses of county departments — and the offices of the elected, constitutional officers, such as Furst — that do not generate sufficient revenue to cover their costs.
As Commissioner Tom Knight noted during the Jan. 13 discussion, the board members also are worried about the potential effects of loss of a significant portion of the county’s annual property tax revenue because of an initiative that Gov. Ron DeSantis has promoted, on which the Legislature is working: cutting property taxes through one or more referenda on the 2026 General Election ballot.
At the outset of the Jan. 13 discussion, Kim Radtke, director of the county’s Office of Financial Management, explained that, since Furst appeared before the commissioners late last year, her staff had learned that the software would be an eligible expense for use of General Government Impact Fee revenue. “But that means that’s less you do with [those impact fee funds].”
She did reiterate the information about Furst’s efforts to negotiate the payment over three years. For the current budget, the expense would be $883,500; for the 2027 fiscal year, it would be $1,497,000; and for FY 2028, it would be $883,500. That put the total at $3,264,000.
Commissioner Knight asked Radtke what effects the use of the General Government Impact Fees for the software might have on other projects. “What is it that our government’s going to have to sacrifice now out of that fund because of the lack of planning?”
“That’s a very good question, Commissioner,” Radtke replied. “In the past,” she said, “we have been able to fund some design and construction [work],” such as that for the South County Courthouse in Venice and the modifications of the Robert L. Anderson Administration Center, also in Venice, next to which that courthouse stands, plus some storage facilities.
Then she showed the board members a chart that her staff had produced, with details about the amount of General Government Impact Fee revenue available for the 2025 fiscal year, as well as the projected amounts for Fiscal Years 2026 through 2028. The slide also pointed to the ending fund balances projected in accord with how the money was planned to be used.
Radtke noted that about $15 million of the fee revenue was designated for county projects in FY 2025.
Given the plans to use some of the funding for county initiatives over the next couple of fiscal years, Radtke added, the expected remaining balance would be $8,840,625 by the end of FY 2028.
However, “This doesn’t include the property appraiser’s cost in it,” she emphasized. Thus, removing the funds for Furst’s request over the three-year period, she noted, would reduce that projected FY 2028 balance.
‘This probably is necessary’
“I was on both sides of the fence,” Knight said as the discussion continued, referring to his readiness to help Furst’s staff, along with his concerns about future county finances. “The checkbook is not unlimited,” he stressed.
“I understand that this has to be done,” he continued of the software purchase. “We certainly don’t want to get involved in [Furst’s] procurement [process]. … This probably is necessary for the property appraiser.”
He would be in support of using the impact fee money instead of General Fund revenue, Knight said.
Nonetheless, he emphasized, “We’re coming into hard times,” referring to the statewide property tax issue.
Then Knight said, “People need to be more strategic financially, like they are with their own checkbook. We’ve still got to give services.”
Commissioner Teresa Mast then asked Radtke, “If this [purchase] were put on pause,” with board direction to staff to try to find other county funding sources for the software, “Could you give us an idea on where you think we might be able to look for [the money]?”
Radtke replied that Brian Loughrey, the chief deputy property appraiser, was present, so she would let him answer Mast’s question.
“I’ll give it a shot, anyway,” Loughrey told Mast.
“I think it’s critical that you have adequate and incredibly great access to the best tech possible,” Mast told him. What concerned her, she continued, “was the abruptness in which [Furst’s request] came; the timing is really bad; really bad.”
Noting Knight’s earlier comments, Mast reiterated his point: “We don’t have endless funds.”
Loughrey nodded.
Taking the money out of the General Fund “is just out of the question,” Mast continued, telling him that she felt Furst and his staff should have recognized sooner that they were going to need the new software and prepared better for that.
“We have been saying this for several years,” Loughrey told her, “in our strategic meetings with the county administrator and staff”; for example: “This is coming.”
Loughrey added, “I understand that the funds are limited. There is no good time to ask for money. We don’t really want to do this.” However, he continued, “We’re beginning to worry” about the lack of support services for the software the staff is using.
He said he believed the code for the software “was written around 1990,” so the company that owns the rights to the system is not planning on continuing to provide support for it. “We had support tickets that were three years old. So it doesn’t give you a great feeling of confidence.”
Last year, Loughrey continued, the tax roll that the office produced for the county had a total value of $110 billion. “It’s a big deal that [the software] works for us.”
Moreover, he said — referencing remarks that Furst made to the commissioners in December 2025 — “If something should come out of Tallahassee that would require a lot of programming effort to make the software function differently, we have some doubts as to whether that can be performed in time for us to produce a tax roll. And that is our concern, really.”
Better budget planning urged
Commissioner Mast told him that she “would strongly suggest” that, in the future, if staff members of the Property Appraiser’s Office “see things coming down the pipe, bring forward [multiple options to pay for whatever is needed], instead of telling the board, “ ‘We have a problem.’ ”
At that point, Commissioner Joe Neunder sought clarification that Loughrey had said that representatives of the Property Appraiser’s Office had advised County administrative staff “for years” that the software would need to be replaced soon.
“Correct,” Loughrey replied.
Referencing comments that County Administrator Jonathan Lewis made on Dec. 16, 2025, Neunder also said that it appeared, “in my humble opinion,” that Clerk of the Circuit Court and County Comptroller Karen Rushing and her staff had advised Lewis and other county staff several years ago that they would need new software, too, and they had done “the prudent thing” by asking county staff to set aside money over a period of about three years to pay for that software.
“Commissioner Knight said it very well,” Neunder added: “This is a hard pill to swallow, given the nature of the fiscal environment that we’re going to be dealing with in the upcoming budgetary cycle. … The Florida Legislature will be having a direct impact on our ability to allocate funding, so we’re going to have very hard conversations from here on forward.”
Loughrey told Neunder that he had talked with Rushing the previous week. “The property appraiser cannot carry forward funds every year,” Loughrey explained. “I did not know there was an option of the county holding funds on behalf of a constitutional officer. That’s something we would definitely like to discuss.”
Commissioner Knight pointed out that, as a constitutional officer, he took such action during the three terms he served as sheriff. “It releases the pressure on the commissioners.”
Knight added, “I think the shock and awe to us would have been relieved if people showed up and talked to us at the last [budget] workshop [for the current fiscal year].” That was held on Aug. 19, 2025.
County Administrator Lewis said he thought Furst initially raised the software issue with county administrative staff about four or five years ago. That exchange occurred during a meeting before the County Commission held its strategic planning retreat for an upcoming year, Lewis added, indicating that he traditionally holds such discussions with the individual constitutional officers in advance of the retreat.
Lewis explained that he had told Furst that county staff could create a Capital Improvement Program account for the software expense, to hold funds until sufficient money was available for the purchase.
“As you all know,” Lewis continued, “Software systems are very, very expensive, and the implementation timeline is a very long time …”
Clerk Rushing notified him four or five years ago, Lewis estimated, that she and her staff would need to “put money away” for new software. That planning was noted in a public discussion with the County Commission, Lewis added.
After those remarks, Commissioner Knight made the motion to pay for Furst’s new software out of General Government Impact fee revenue over three years, and Commissioner Mast seconded it.
With no further discussion, the motion passed 5-0.