OVIEDO, Fla. — On Thursday, the Oviedo City Council held a work session meeting to consider options to fund the city budget.

What You Need To Know

  • The Ovideo City Council met Thursday to discuss what options it has to fund the city budget

  • The discussions included a possible tax increase, a cut in public services, or both

  • At least one local business owner said he wasn't to see his taxes go down, not up

Some of those included discussions of whether to add a millage increase, cut public services, or both.

Loun Rogers, the owner of Jerk Grill, said he would like to see lower taxes, not higher.

“Property tax is a bit hard,” he said. “When it comes to property tax, I think it needs to go down.”

Oviedo Mayor Megan Sladek said a mileage increase may be necessary, because it would allow the city to increase public services compensation pay. 

“We’re not able to offer market wages and we got a vacancy rate of almost one in four positions,” Sladek said. “Nobody will work for us for the wages we’re offering.”

The mileage increase is estimated about two mills, which would cause taxpayers to pay a bit more.

“So, right now it’s $5.23 roughly for every $1,000 of taxable property,” Sladek said. “Instead of 5.228 it could be as high as 5.428.”

She said it’s not a lot, but it’s enough to increase the city’s compensation rate.

“We are not allowing $15 an hour here and people won’t work if you don’t offer them at least $15, especially in Central Florida,” Sladek said.

Rogers said the increase will be a double whammy for him — paying additional taxes for his business and the property he plans to buy.

He said he came to Florida to avoid paying more in taxes.

“I don’t want to pay a lot of tax, especially as a small business owner,” Rogers said. “We just started out and the tax is something a lot of people are running from."

Another option is to cut some public works services, outside of first responders.

Sladek said the city already outsources some parks and recreation work.

The City Council and the mayor already axed an idea to establish a fire assessment district to fund fire protection services.

Sladek said the fire fee would have given large multi-unit property owners a tax break, as opposed to the mileage increase.

“It put a disproportionate amount of the additional tax burden on single-family home owners,” she said.

Whatever the final plan, Rogers said he hopes the City Council takes residents into account first.

The City Council has until September to finalize its budget.