Tampa City Councilman Harry Cohen warned the city’s budget vote Friday will have long-term effects. Cohen’s compromise proposal to have the Council vote on raising the millage rate by 0.475 broke a seven-hour stalemate just after midnight Friday morning on Mayor Bob Buckhorn‘s fiscal year 2018 budget.
Shortly after midnight Friday morning, the Tampa City Council voted 4-3 to raise property taxes for the first in 29 years.
With less than two weeks before the new fiscal year begins, Tampa’s City Council voted Monday night to advance a budget raising property taxes for the first time in 29 years. However, the increase would not be as much as originally proposed by Mayor Bob Buckhorn. The Council opted to support the $974.2 budget plan which raises the millage rate from $5.7326 to $6.3326 per $1,000 of assessed value.
The Tampa City Council is scheduled to vote on raising property taxes for the first time in almost three decades next week, but the size of that tax remains unknown less than a month before next year’s budget goes into effect.
For the first time in nearly three decades, the city of Tampa is poised to raise property taxes. But first, City Council members want a lot more information from Mayor Bob Buckhorn before agreeing to any millage rate increase.
When the Hillsborough County Metropolitan Planning Organization first voted on the Tampa Bay Express project two years ago, Tampa City Councilman Guido Maniscalco was the lone member to oppose the proposal. Since that time, he’s been an unrelenting critic of the Florida Department of Transportation’s plan to add the toll lanes that would impact the neighborhoods of Seminole Heights, Tampa Heights and V.M. Ybor. What a difference a reboot makes.
One of the most controversial elements of the Florida Department of Transportation’s now aborted $6 billion Tampa Bay Express (TBX) project was that it would have put toll lanes on parts of I-275 between downtown Tampa and Pinellas County. TBX is now history, though elements of it remain alive. But FDOT officials insist they have an open mind about what they will do now that they have evolved the project into Tampa Bay Next, which is “looking at everything in…
