Orlando’s proposed $1.82 billion budget adds money for SunRail and more police
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Orlando commissioners got their first glimpse Monday of a proposed $1.82 billion spending plan for next year, which includes expanding fire services in the fast-growing southeast wing of the city, as well as taking on the city’s share of SunRail costs.
The budget, which will be tweaked and voted on by commissioners by the end of September, keeps the property tax rate flat at $6.65 per $1,000 of taxable value – though residents will see higher tax bills with property values continuing to rise year over year.
Among additions to this year’s plan is Orlando’s $14 million bill for SunRail, which accounts for nine months of operating the region’s commuter train. The 61-mile rail line had been funded and operated by the Florida Department of Transportation since its inception; however at year’s end, its costs will be passed on to the seven local governments with station stops.
While some local governments were met with “sticker shock” at the new expense, Mayor Buddy Dyer, a chief proponent of SunRail who hopes to expand the train to Orlando International Airport and the Orange County Convention Center, said the city is prepared to fund its share.
“I think it’s significantly more than we ever anticipated it would be… but we’d budgeted for this day to come,” he said.
City officials project their 12-month share the following year to come in around $18 million, said Chief Financial Officer Michelle McCrimmon.
Orlando’s general fund – the pot of money that pays for services like police, fire, parks, roads among clothes – was boosted 7% to $708 million this year.
Commissioner Jim Gray said he feared that the city wasn’t budgeting enough to fund its public works department to keep up with growth – which he said was reflected in the increase in the storm water fee commissioners OK’d earlier this year, after not updating it for more than a decade.
“We waited, in my opinion, too long to do that,” said Gray, who represents Lake Nona and southeast Orlando. “As we grow as a city, public works is going to continue to be a big source of funding for us.”
Among the 132 new positions funded this year are 77 in police and fire departments, with vast needs in fast-growing Lake Nona, as well as the swath of nearly 12,000 acres brought into the city limits that include the planned Sunbridge development.
Among the new positions at OPD are 11 that will make up a “homeless intervention unit” working full time with a fast-growing unsheltered population, many of whom sleep under highway overpasses and on city sidewalks.
A new state law that goes into effect Oct. 1 requires local governments to enforce camping bans, which advocates fear will compel police departments to arrest people experiencing homelessness.
Dyer said the city doesn’t want to arrest them, but instead is trying to link the chronically homeless to resources available in the area and to control aggressive panhandlers.
A smaller version of the team has been working in Orlando for months, he said, and has made some arrests.
“We don’t want to arrest people, we want to help them to the extent that we can,” he said. “The arrests have been nominal and the contacts have been thousands.”
