Lazaro Aleman
ECB Publishing, Inc.
County officials recently approved two resolutions that reimpose the special assessments that fund fire protection and solid waste collections, increasing the annual amounts that city and county residents and businesses must pay for the two services.
The first resolution set the fire assessment rate at $198 per residential dwelling unit, regardless of whether it’s a single or multifamily unit, up from the current rate of $113.40 for a single-family unit and $64 per unit for multifamily structures. It set the fire assessment on nonresidential or commercial structures at four-cents-per-square-foot, up from the present-day rate of two-cents-per-square-foot.
County officials decided not to impose an assessment on vacant land, as recommended by the consultant firm that conducted a study of the rates, as required by law. According to the figures that the consultant provided, the commission could have upped the fire assessment as high as $297 for residential units and six-cents-per-square-foot for nonresidential or commercial structures.
The assessment is expected to raise $1,476,220 in the coming fiscal year, which will go to fund the county’s fire protection operation.
Government buildings, institutions such as churches and nonprofits, and homestead properties of permanently disabled veterans or their surviving spouses are exempt from the assessments. As are lands that are classified as agriculture and nonresidential structures on such lands, per a new law that Florida lawmakers adopted in the last session. Residential structures on agricultural land, however, may still be assessed, per the state law.
Also per the new state law, according to Assistant County Attorney Evan Rosenthal, any budget shortfall caused by the cited exemptions cannot be made up from the other assessed proceeds but must be made up from another source, such as the general fund.
Commissioners raised the solid waste assessment to $248 per residential dwelling unit, up $23 from the current annual assessment of $225 per residential unit. The rate increase is expected to generate an additional $140,000 to operate the solid waste department. This assessment does not apply to nonresidential or commercial properties, which pay for their garbage pick-up on a rental fee basis.
Significantly, County Attorney Heather Encinosa informed the commission that effective Oct. 1, the county will no longer be paying the tipping fee for the city at the regional landfill.
“The city is going to have to do that on its own,” Encinosa said, noting that this information had already been conveyed to the city staff and city attorney.
The way it would work effective Oct. 1, Encinosa said, was that the county would remit to the city a portion of the assessment revenues collected within its boundaries to help it cover the tipping fee costs.
Additionally, she said, the rental rates for the pick-up and disposal of commercial garbage from nonresidential properties would soon also be updated to reflect the tipping fee charge, as these accounts no longer paid the annual assessment.
Last fall, in fact, the commission removed nonresidential or commercial properties from the assessment and adopted instead a rental rate that charges commercial accounts specific rates for the pick-up and disposal of their garbage. These rates, which went into effect last Sept. 1, are $40 per pick-up for four-yard containers, $50 per pick-up for six-yard containers, and $60 per pick-up for eight-yard containers.
Others of the charges are $100 per pick-up for 20-yard roll-off containers, $250 for pick-up of tree debris, bulk loads and tire disposals, with the tipping fee already attached to the latter two activities. Other than for the last two, however, the remaining services will soon also have to pay a tipping fee.
Encinosa told commissioners that the noncommercial rates were in the process of being updated and should soon come before them for consideration.
The final hearing on the fire and solid waste assessments is scheduled for 5 p.m. Thursday, Sept. 14, at which time the two amounts become final. Until then, the commission can always decide to lower the rates, although the latter is not likely to happen.
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