2024 Budget Raises $100M in New Property Taxes

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At the first public hearing on the 2024 PBC County budget on 9/7, the Board of County Commissioners (BCC) followed through with their intention to reduce the millage by about 5% from 4.715 to 4.500. As in July, the vote was unanimous.

A reduction in the millage of that much was a bit of a surprise in June as staff had recommended keeping it flat, and the change reduces the original county-wide ad-valorem tax proposal by $62M. Kudos to Commissioner Marino for suggesting the change and getting the rest of the board to follow her lead.

That said, the county-wide property tax burden is still going up by 8.5% since taxable valuations have climbed almost 15% since last year. That is an increase of $102M. Where is the new money going you ask? Much of it goes to a 6% across the board increase for every employee. This is on top of 3% a year, every year for the last nine (34% from 2014).

Some other increases:

• $54M more for the Sheriff – this is a 7.5% increase, yet the PBSO share of the total budget has declined to 59.5% from a peak of 66.4% in 2020
• $105M increase in reserves. The $1.6B in reserves are now 32% of budgeted expenditures, up from 28% one year ago.
• $29M increase in BCC operations net of revenues
• $85M in capital projects
• $12M increase for the Supervisor of elections, now at $34M (55% increase). Next year is a Presidential election year, but the budget in 2020 was only $16M so it is more than doubled. At the hearing, the majority of speakers addressed this line item and there appears to be an upswell of angst about the conduct of elections in Palm Beach County. This budget increase does not help that much.

The Fire / Rescue budget (separate taxing district, paid only if your town does not have its own F/R) has increased over 10% to $529M.

Total staffing is increasing by 66 to 12,369.

The final public hearing will be held on September 26th at 5:05pm.