MIAMI – Your Miami-Dade tax rate stays flat in the mayor’s proposed budget that’ll pay to run the county.
But that same tax rate does not mean you will pay the same tax bill.
If your property value is up, that’s good, but multiplied by that flat tax, it’s more.
“We must essentially hit the reset button,” Miami-Dade Mayor Daniella Levine Cava said during a news conference announcing the budget on Monday.
For the first time, the county’s annual budget reveal includes the five departments newly independent from the county this upcoming year, but still funded by it, including the big kahuna, the new sheriff’s office.
Also included will are the county tax collector’s office, the property appraiser’s office, the supervisor of elections and the clerk of court.
“Though these offices are independent, we are required to fund them through the general fund,” Levine Cava said.
Miami-Dade Commission Chair Oliver Gilbert predicts a difficult year with federal COVID relief funds running out.
“We have to give people the same service that they’ve gotten before,” he said. “It will not be without some growing pains.
Miami Lakes Mayor Manny Cid, running against Levine Cava in a primary election for the nonpartisan mayor’s office — with a vote already underway by mail as of Monday — was the most vocally critical of the mayor’s six challengers.
“She added 800 positions,” Cid said. “We have a shrinking middle class here in Miami-Dade County and what that will do is exacerbate those folks leaving our county.”
The announcement is just the start of the process. It has to go to the county commission, which can choose to change or pass it.
A series of town halls are planned ahead of that vote. Dates and locations have not yet been announced as of Monday.