BROOKSVILLE — Depending on whom you ask, Brooksville is either on a spending spree or building for a better future. For now, a majority of the City Council is betting on the future.
On a pair of 4-1 votes Sept. 9, the council approved on first reading a tax rate of 6.5 mills and a $14.65 million budget. The spending plan includes a 2% cost-of-living raise for city employees in October, a 2% merit raise in April 2027 and a new assistant for Public Works Director Richard Weeks.
The proposed rate is 0.37% below the rolled-back rate of 6.5239 mills. The rolled-back rate is the rate that would bring in the same property tax revenue as the current year, not counting new construction.
Council Member Betty Erhard cast both dissenting votes. She favored a rate of 6.2 mills and criticized spending on the city’s economic development department and a budget item for Brooksville Main Street.
The council will hold its second and final hearing on the budget and tax rate at 6 p.m. Wednesday, Sept. 23.
Residents push back
During public comment, a man said he recently bought a house in Brooksville after years of living elsewhere in Hernando County. He said he was shocked by his potential tax bill.
He said his highest tax bill in 24 years in the county, school taxes included, was $2,300. This year his city taxes alone are $3,700, he said.
“I love Brooksville, and I love my new home, and I’m not saying I can’t afford it, but when is enough enough?” he asked.
He said he had downsized and trusted a builder’s salesperson who told him city taxes were “really cheap.” He acknowledged he didn’t know Brooksville’s tax rate was higher than the county’s.
“And now I’m stuck with a big bill,” he said.
He also questioned how much of the 0.37% reduction simply reflected the city’s transfer of its fire department to the county.
Another speaker, a woman, declined to give her name, saying her personal information is exempt from public records. She said the council has a fiduciary responsibility to protect taxpayers, not to expand government because “departments want bigger budgets.”
The millage process is supposed to “prevent government from treating taxpayers like a revenue stream,” she said. She urged the council to adopt what she called the rolled-back rate of 5.7407 mills to keep taxes flat.
During council comments after the votes, Erhard said she agreed with the speakers that the city has a fiduciary responsibility to taxpayers. She said two budget meetings were “pathetic” and that there should have been more meetings and deeper cuts.
“DPW does not need an assistant,” she said, referring to the Department of Public Works. She said she drove to the meeting over potholed roads and that medians and retention ponds aren’t being maintained. Yet employees are in line for two 2% raises, she said.
She also objected to what she called “duplication of government,” including $50,000 for Brooksville Main Street and economic development. If the city is going to fund Main Street, she said, it should eliminate the economic development department.
“Why do we need both?” she asked.
Majority defends spending
Council Member J.W. McKethan said the city is taking care of residents and its employees are doing a good job.
“We’re not inflating our budget for no reason,” he said. “We are trying to get our employees to do as much as they can with the little bits that we can give them, and also future planning for our city.”
Council Member Louis Hallal said city employees had been among the lowest paid in the area and that retention has improved.
“You get what you pay for,” he said.
Hallal said the woman’s rolled-back rate figure was wrong. “We should be charging more,” he said.
Last year, Hallal said, he told the council the city needed a 6.5-mill rate for two to three years to get back to where it needs to be financially.
“This was the first year that this city balanced its budget without taking the money out of the reserves in the last four years,” he said. “So we’re doing something right.”
He said a capital improvement fund is receiving money to address problems such as potholes. He said the city also paved three roads that weren’t in the budget.
Dropping the rate to 6.2 mills would take about $260,000 out of the budget, Hallal said, while the city faces about $30,000 in added costs for a new city attorney.
He said the city has paid off its fire pension fund and cut $20,000 from the cost of a tractor.
The city also must pay $26,783 this year for a police department it no longer has, he said. Those payments will continue for 40 years and total more than $1 million.
Mayor Christa Tanner said this is her fourth budget season, and she has seen what happens when the city isn’t funded as it should be.
A city has to plan for the future, she said. When you join an organization that hasn’t been planning ahead, she said, “you become ‘the bad guy.’”
Some people are relying on “talking points” without offering real solutions, she said.
Tanner said she appreciates everyone’s point of view and knows how the council’s decisions affect people, including city employees.
“This is their career,” she said. She noted that some employees live in the city and some don’t, and that they come to work no matter the weather.
“We are always looking for ways to cut costs,” she said, adding that the same goes for the city’s department heads.
Longtime employee remembered
At the start of a special council meeting on the fire pension, members paused to remember former city employee Terri Carter. Carter worked for Brooksville for 20 years and died Sept. 4.
Carter’s family and friends attended and posed for a photo after a proclamation honoring her was read.
Carter joined the city in 2005 and worked wherever she was needed, including customer service, utilities, city administration and human resources. She also worked as an executive assistant in the city manager’s office.
Wherever she went, she shared her knowledge and experience, Tanner said.
Other council members said Carter had a big influence on them as they learned their way around city government.
“She treated me like a mother,” Vice Mayor Thomas Bronson said. He recalled that she took an interest when he got married and when his children were born.
“She was a superstar,” Hallal said, adding that Carter was sweet and kind.