Instead of a 13.3% uptick for Sarasota County, increase proves to be 14.3%
During his budget presentation to the Sarasota County Commission last week, Brian Loughrey, chief deputy property appraiser for the county, reported that the latest refinements of the property tax figures for this year showed a higher increase than the June 1 preliminary figure that the Property Appraiser’s Office had provided to the state.
As of the morning of June 20, Loughrey noted, the figure was 14.27%, instead of the June 1 figure of 13.3%.
The number ended up a bit higher in the document sent to the state to meet the required July 1 deadline: 14.3%.
Loughrey provided copies of the July 1 reports to The Sarasota News Leader at its request on June 29.
The 2023 tax value of Sarasota County property in the latest data was $94,200,672,951. That compares to the 2022 certified county property tax value of $82,398,547,608.
The state’s July 1 deadline enables local governments to approve their not-to-exceed millage rates for the next fiscal year and provide them to the Property Appraiser’s Office for the formal Truth in Millage (TRIM) notices that go out in August.
The County Commission already has told County Administrator Jonathan Lewis that it will hold steady once again on its millage rate, which is 3.34. However, debt service on the bonds for extensions of The Legacy Trail — which voters approved during a November 2018 referendum — will affect the final figure, as Lewis has pointed out. Board members have not raised the millage rate since the 2007 fiscal year. Nonetheless, as Commissioner Mark Smith pointed out last week, county property owners still will pay more in taxes this year, thanks to the higher values.
Board members have not been rolling back the operating millage rates to the levels that would have ensured that the county received the same amount of money from the tax payments that it would have taken in without those increases in value.
One mill represents $1,000 of the value of a property.
For this fiscal year, the county’s Office of Financial Management staff put the property tax revenue at $226 million, based on the traditional estimate that the county will collect 95% of what it is owed. That staff’s projection for the 2024 fiscal year was $255.7 million, as indicated in a slide for the commission’s budget workshops last week.
The commissioners will conduct their budget hearings in September, after they set their not-to-exceed millage rate in July, before they take their traditional four-week summer break.
The taxable value for the county was not the only figure that rose in the latest reports provided by the Property Appraiser’s Office.
While the preliminary, June 1 uptick for the City of Sarasota was 12.39%, the latest property tax value puts that at 13.3%. The new property value total is $16,705,497,513, compared to the 2022 certified amount of $14,741,900,749.
As the News Leader noted in its report on the preliminary values, the City of North Port saw the largest jump this year, compared to the 2022 certified figures. That was 16.57%. The new value raises it to 17.3%.
The July 1 taxable value of North Port property is $8,515,885,312, compared to the 2022 certified value of $7,257,635,185.
The City of Venice was in second place in terms of property tax value upticks in the June 1 data, with a figure of 14.28%. Its July 1 increase is 15.2%. The July 1 taxable value total for that municipality is $6,613,828,840; the 2022 certified figure was $5,738,209,962.
For the Town of Longboat Key, the increase in value in the June 1 data was 12.16%. The July 1 report raises that to 12.8%.
The June 1 total for Longboat Key property was $5,091,944,937. The July 1 figure is $5,744,062,264.
Finally, for the Sarasota County School Board, the July 1 data put its uptick at 14%, while the preliminary increase in the June 1 report was 11.84%
The School Board’s July 1 total is $107,921,659,624. That compares to the 2022 certified value of $94,654,238,334.
Among other details in the July 1 report for the county, the document notes that the total number of county parcels is 298,357, which is up almost 1.6%, compared to the 293,685 figure in the 2022 report for the state. (See the related article in this issue.)
Of those county parcels, 592 are classified as agricultural. The 2022 figure was 628; in 2021, the total was 800.
The number of county parcels with homestead exemptions, in which the values are capped, is 120,977, the new data show. In 2022, the number was 117,816.
Among other data in the latest reports, the taxable value of single-family residential property in the county is $49,126,080,057, a jump of 15%, compared to the 2022 figure of $42,701,965,359.
The 2023 taxable value for multi-family residential housing with 10 or more units in the county is $2,885,652,607; for complexes with fewer than 10 units, the total is $2,717,949,749.
The comparable 2022 values for multi-family housing were $2,385,744,930 and $2,408,945,237, respectively.
Finally, the July 1 report puts the taxable value of condominiums in the county at $18,828,570,728, which is approximately 12.7% higher than the 2022 figure of $16,710,965,604.