Cape Coral City Council may opt to approve the “rollback” rate for property taxes, essentially leaving revenues from that source flat.

After hearing how using the lower rate would affect the city’s working budget for the new fiscal year, multiple members of Council said at Tuesday’s workshop that they could support the rate of 5.0888 mills.

“When we go to the public hearings there will be two options – you can go to the rollback or adopt the half back budget. You now have both pictures in front of you,” City Manager Mike Ilczyszyn said.

“The way I look at this – this alternative is really no different as far as projects are concerned, or the budget, except there is a different philosophy of how we are paying for it,” Mayor John Gunter said. “We are still doing the golf course, still have five police officers – adjusted how we are paying for the golf course. We are still achieving exactly what we are achieving in the half back rate.”

He said residents would get somewhat of a break this year in their taxes.

Council members Jessica Cosden, Dan Sheppard and Richard Carr also voiced that they were in favor of the rollback rate.

“I always came into it – the rollback would be great, but if it hurts the city and residents, it’s not the right way to go,” Cosden said. “I came into this year saying to myself I will keep an open mind. I believe this budget works and I am pleasantly surprised.”

Financial Services Director Mark Mason said there would be a decrease of $6.3 million from the original proposed budget at the rollback rate.

“This is the amount that we would reduce in order to get to the rollback rate,” he said.

The additional general fund revenue – net adjustment – is $1.2 million.

The new proposed budget included the removal of three proposed new positions from the city attorney’s office, and the addition of five traffic officers for six months.

“The additional change would be to remove the reallocation of the old golf course purchase,” Mason said, which originally had $4 million set aside.

In addition, it would remove the golf course remediation of $1.3 million from the General Fund from which most city operations are paid.

The city is still looking at acquiring the golf course acreage, as well as putting remediation cost, annual maintenance cost and potential improvement costs to the old golf course aside. As now proposed, those funds would come from the 2024 unassigned fund balance of $17.6 million.

With those funds available, Mason said they would recommend using $3.4 million from the general fund to purchase the old golf course, as well as hold back half of the funds from the Community Redevelopment Agency.

“We believe there will be additional items over the course of several years to use the funds for,” he said.

The CRA portion went from $5,395,643 to $2,697,821.50, adding to reduce the CRA portion of the acquisition, they swapped out $2.3 million with stormwater due to the number of lakes of the property, as well as stormwater ponds and maintaining them.

Mason said they will put $8 million aside for remediation, maintenance, and improvements for 2025, 2026, 2027 and 2028.

Ilczyszyn said he had put the golf course in recurring revenue to take care of such things as lot mowing expenses, cart path renovations and exotic removals. He said the intent of putting aside the $8 million is for intermediate recurring revenue.

Ilczyszyn said they are utilizing the revenue that they have today to fund them up to the point where City Council and the administration need to make decisions of what will be built at the old golf course, and how to pay for operations.

“We are going to fund the first couple of years with the money we have and let those decisions be made by the council at the time,” he said.

The city was also notified of receiving the CDBG-DR Grant Match for Resiliency Hub.

“We will be awarded a grant from the CDBG-DR grants for recreation center/shelter in the north part of the city. The original request was $40 million. We will be receiving $35 million,” Mason said. “We explained at the time that we will certainly see what comes out of their proposal. With that proposal, we are looking to tie up $5.35 million.”

At the rollback rate, the all-funds proposed budget is $996,199,502 and the general fund proposed budget is $237,4414,765.

There was also discussion about the solid waste assessment, which will be voted on at the final public hearing on Aug. 28. Carr wants to consider a reduction of the solid waste assessment, as it is another way to reduce the overall tax burden on citizens.

There is a proposed 14.7% increase in solid waste rates.

Ilczyszyn said when they originally had the discussion of the solid waste contract date ending in three years, there were a few different options. They included letting the existing rate ride for three years and then have a 100% increase to get to the market rate; each year over next three years increase the rate about a third each year, so at the end of the three years, revenues collected would become hurricane reserves and tapper into a longer period of time where the first three years would be over collecting, followed by under collecting.

Further information will be brought before the council at the Aug. 28 meeting before the vote.

The first public hearing, approving the tentative millage rates and proposed budget will take place at 5:05 p.m. Thursday, Sept. 12. The final public hearing to adopt the millage rates and budget, will take place at 5:05 p.m., Thursday, Sept. 26.