FERNANDINA BEACH, Fla. — Fernandina Beach city commissioners are looking for other ways to pay for their expenses after voters overwhelmingly opposed their paid parking program.
Thursday night, Fernandina Beach city commissioners will have their first of two votes on the city’s proposed millage rate — or tax rate.
In July, Vice Mayor Darron Ayescue said that the commission adopted the highest rate possible without having to have a unanimous vote.
It’s estimated to bring in roughly $1.5 million in property tax revenue, the same amount of money the city expects to lose after voting to rescind its paid parking contract earlier this month.
“The state of Florida, Amendment Three that’s on the ballot in November, is to increase homestead exemption,” Ayscue said. “That is a cry, it’s a scream, so to speak, from constituents across the state of Florida and here in Fernandina Beach that are tired of local governments spending every dime that they can get their hands on.”
Ayescue says there are better ways to fund the projects around the city.
“I think it’s just smart budgeting; I think that we can get there,” Ayscue said. “That’s what I’m going to be looking for tonight: to go ahead, find where we can make these cuts, find where we can defer projects that we need to in order to do the critical ones now.”
Ronald Heymann, a business owner in the city, says the millage increase points to bigger issues in the city’s handling of money, and the city’s former paid parking program is just the scapegoat.
“We’re talking about a city budget of almost $250 million,” Heymann said. “Like that is a huge, huge budget for a relatively small town.. The knee-jerk [decision] was to just raise taxes instead of making some tougher decisions.”
I reached out to the mayor and all of the other city commissioners for comment, and did not receive a response back.
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