By Julia Roberts
Unless budget discussions change minds, properties in Fernandina Beach will be taxed at the same rate in the 2025-26 fiscal year as they were in the current year, as the city commission voted to keep the same millage, 4.6849.
At a budget workshop held July 29, City Manager Sarah Campbell explained the value of properties in the city raised from $4,322,014,732 in 2024-25 to $4,744,257,752, an increase of 9.77%. Consequently, taxing properties at the same millage will yield 9.77% more revenue — $21,337,318 — up from $19,438,279. Keeping the same tax rate is considered a raise in taxes, as it will bring more money into city coffers.
“I think I took a pretty conservative approach with our budget. I typically like to spend within our means,” Campbell told the city commission. “There’s not a lot of fluff. If you wanted me to go back and start reducing in other areas, I could send you a prioritized list of what I would cut first and where you could find additional money. But, without harming the level of service, I think this is a lean budget.”
Campbell said the new budget cuts 17 full-time equivalency positions and supports some city services and facilities.
“Right now, what your budget includes is a contribution to the Fernandina Beach Golf Club, greatly reduced but still about $400,000, I would say capital improvements are three-quarters of that; a $600,000 contribution to the Fernandina Harbor Marina to cover the debt service; $2.5 million to the Capital Improvement Fund; and a little bit to the Fleet Fund, which is our internal service fund,” she said.
The proposed budget includes a $510,000 surplus.
Commission discussion of the millage rate led to the need for additional revenue to revitalize the city’s historic downtown, which has been called the economic driver of the city. A revenue stream currently being considered by the city is paid parking downtown. One of the supporters of paid downtown parking is Commissioner Tim Poynter, who spoke passionately about the subject, saying paid parking would bring in money without raising taxes. He said raising taxes to pay for improvements and maintenance downtown puts the burden of maintaining downtown only on taxpayers, while the 100,000 residents of Nassau County as well a million visitors use the city’s facilities each year.
“Increases in taxes are so disproportionate. There are 10% of the people who pay less than $100 per year; it will add a dollar, or two or three, to their tax bill,” Poynter said. “People who are paying $100,000 a year will be adding $5,000 to accomplish the same thing, which is to try to get some money to try to fix our downtown.”
Commissioner Genece Minshew said an increase in taxes will fall on business owners who do not own the buildings in which they operate, not the property owners themselves.
“Property owners downtown have said, ‘You can raise my taxes, I don’t care because I just roll that down to the rents that I charge for my space,’” Minshew said. “We are going to get, very soon, to the point that the people we are trying to help on the street are not going to be there anymore. What is going to be there are very high-end, franchise stores that are selling godawful high end services and tchotskies to tourists. It will not be local owners of those businesses because they will not be able to afford the rents on the street. The only people who will be able to afford rent on the street are people who are coming in with high-end franchises, selling very high end products. These lovely little mom-and-pop stores downtown are going to get priced off the street.”
Commissioner Joyce Tuten said higher taxes will also trickle down to residential renters who cannot afford it, although she did not have specific data to support that theory.
“Thirteen percent of (residents of) our city live below the poverty line (a family of four making $32,000 a year). You could argue that the vast majority of them are renters,” Tuten said. “I don’t know that, but you could argue that. Which means, we increase these taxes, that means that property is probably not homesteaded, and that property is going up 10%, which means a tax increase is going to be pushed on to our renters. We talk about how we pricing people off this island, the very people who are working in our shops and restaurants.”
Vice Mayor Darron Ayscue took a historic view of the city’s income and expenditures, questioning how the city handles its money. Ayscue told the Nassau NewsLine he based his calculations on data pulled from the city’s records and website.
“Back in 2015, the assessed property values in Fernandina Beach were $1.6 billion. Today, they sit at $4.7 billion,” Ayscue said. “That’s $3.1 billion dollars additional assessed property values. That’s an enormous amount. At the time, the millage rate matched with those assessed property values generated about $9.9 million; $9.9 million today is not the same, you have to adjust it for inflation, which puts you at about $13.3 million, if you adjusted what we were taking in then to today’s budget, $13.3 million. We are sitting at $21.8, if we did the modified rollback. It’s a 50% increase in the budget. Fifty percent increase in the budget, adjusted for inflation. A 50% increase in the budget in 10 years?”
Ayscue said much of the increased budget goes toward city employees, and that the number of people working for the city has increased at a much higher rate than the increase in city residents.
“Back in 2015, we had a population of about 11,800. We have 13,470 or somewhere around that; really, since 2020, our population has decreased. That’s a 14% increase from 2015 to now in population, and we had a 50% increase in the budget in the same period. I don’t even know how that’s possible.” Ayscue said that even allowing for 1,500 tourists in the city daily, the numbers don’t add up.
“So let’s take that (population) number from 13,500 to 15,000 – that’s a 27% increase, and a 50% increase in the budget? Where is the money going? That’s what everybody is asking. I can tell you where it is going. We started in 2015 with an (employee) headcount of 200, and we are at 300 now. For me, in no way, shape or form, am I looking at taking that number that much higher when we can barely justify, per population, why we are increasing the budget 50%, adjusted for inflation. It’s insane to me.”
Minshew said one of the increases in employee compensation was $2 million that was spent across the board on employee pay raises by the previous city commission, required because their pay had not been adjusted in 13 years.
Commissioners also expressed interest in asking voters to approve a bond that could bring in revenue to pay for downtown revitalization as well as mitigate flooding in the city by building a seawall on the Amelia River waterfront. Ayscue favored the idea, saying it would put the decision in the hands of the people who would be paying for it: voters.
“If everybody is for fixing the downtown, then they are going to vote for a bond. If we are all on the same page, and we all want to fix downtown, and we don’t want to decide that we raise taxes, then we let the people do that. It’s very simple,” he said. “We just put it out for a bond, and if everybody agrees that we need to fix downtown, and everybody agrees that we don’t want the commission to make that decision because, if the commission makes it, we all get voted out. That’s fine. Give it to the people. The people will vote for it if they want it.”
Minshew argued that the city commission has talked about asking voters to approve a bond for years, going as far as hiring consulting firms to explore what projects voters would be likely to fund, but those plans did not come to fruition.
“People who own non-homesteaded properties and commercial properties are generally not voters in the city, so we are just going to put the burden on them, and not worry about the consequences,” Minshew said. “I think that is wrong and I don’t want to do that anymore. I say we go with the 4.6849 and then if we are serious about a general obligation bond, then let’s move in that direction.”
In the end, the commission did tentatively approve the 4.6849 millage rate by a 4-1 vote, with Ayscue casting the dissenting vote. Additional budget workshops will be held Aug. 5 and Aug. 6. Additional workshops are scheduled for Aug. 7, Aug. 11 and Aug. 12, if needed. A meeting and public hearing to finalize the proposed millage and tentative budget will be held Sept. 3, and a meeting and public workshop will be held Sept. 16 to give final approval to the millage rate and 2025-26 budget.
jroberts@nassaunewsline.net
