Cape Coral City Council held its final public hearing on the city budget Thursday night, approving a billion-dollar financial plan for the fiscal year starting Oct. 1.

The budget, all funds included, came in at $1,095,678,548, a 13.25% increase, with the city’s General Fund for operations set at $228,269,306, a 5.41% increase over FY 2023.

On the plus side, there are many good and necessary things in this budget for a growing city: Additional police and firefighters; additional personnel and infrastructure to provide city utilities; road improvements, including paving and intersection upgrades; money for “deferred maintenance” issues at city parks and ballfields as well as new playgrounds.

On the negative side, for those of us who are city taxpayers, the budget holds tax increases nearly across the board.

Council held the property tax rate, for city operations, at the same level as last year — $5.3694 per $1,000 of assessed taxable valuation.

Due to new construction and another sizeable increase in overall valuation despite Hurricane Ian, the impact of leaving the rate the same is a 12.99% increase over the “rollback rate” of 4.7519 mills.

Rollback is the rate at which the city would receive the same amount of money from property taxes as the year before. If property value increases on an individual property, taxes increase even if the rate remains the same with the actual amount depending on whether the property is owner-occupied and homesteaded or not with state-mandate caps limiting increases to no more than 3% and 10 % respectively.

Other taxes will increase as well with Council approving an increase in the city’s Fire Services Assessment, one of two new taxes approved in 2013 that were intended to provide “revenue diversification” and better balance the tax burden for property owners. The assessment currently offsets 70% (up from 62%) of the city’s cost of providing fire protection with the money going into the General Fund. Before the FSA was passed, fire services, like police services, were funded solely through property taxes.

The city will receive an estimated $47,204,210 in FSA funds, more than four times the overall amount levied a decade ago as the “recapture” percentage has climbed since its inception and now exceeds the originally discussed “cap” of 60%.

The rate for the second tax passed in conjunction with the FSA as part of that revenue diversification plan, the public services tax, remains this year at 7% of the taxable portion of your electric bill where the city also collects another 3% for the franchise fee it levies.

The city got a windfall last year due to escalating fuel costs.

Also going up? Stormwater fees, solid waste assessments, lot-moving fees.

City officials can and do cite needs and growth.

Well, enough.

They made their arguments with little public protestation.

We’ll not offer any here.

We will, though, point out that the criticisms of a decade ago are a truth in today’s fiscal reality: “Revenue diversification” has proven to be simply additional taxes for the General Fund that come out of the same taxpayer pockets while cloaking the true millage rate — a hot button, especially when increased — as the FSA is not reflected.

“Additional revenue streams” may allow the city to rely less on “only” property taxes for personnel, projects and more.

But Cape taxpayers may only rely on little to no out-of-pocket benefit in terms of actual tax relief or a lower tax bill.

— Breeze editorial