Winter Garden extinguishes fire fee assessment proposal

The Winter Garden City Commission unanimously voted not to proceed with a fire assessment fee at its meeting Thursday, Aug. 14. 

The city passed a resolution in June that allowed the commission to consider implementing a fire assessment fee that would have cost residents between $333 and $518 depending on square footage if the maximum fee was implemented. 

The fee would have helped fund an $8.4 million gap in services as property taxes only would bring in about $28.4 million, which accounts for 77% of the total amount needed for fire and police protection services. 

City Manager Jon C. Williams said the goal all along was to bring down the potential fee and potentially not impose it at all.

After residents pushed back on the fire assessment fee during community engagement meetings and upon further examination of the budget, Williams recommended the City Commission not move forward with the assessment. 

“If you recall, we adopted the initial assessment resolution back in late June, which was certainly before we received any of our certification of taxable values, prior to the state’s adoption of the budget, prior to the releasing of revenue estimates,” he said. 

Williams said city staff has been working on the budget since March, and staff identified reductions in personnel and operating totaling $1.9 million as well as reductions in the capital budget of $2.2 million for a total of $4.1 million in reductions.

He said the reductions were achieved using zero-based funding budgeting, cutting new position requests in personnel, reducing capital expenditures and placing a freeze on 10 vacant, non-public safety positions. He said the capital equipment requests primarily were impacted. 

“We are canceling the fire assessment, period,” Mayor John Rees said. 

The unanimous vote was met with a thunderous applause in a packed chamber. 

City ghosts Halloween Fest

During matters from the city manager, Williams recommended the cancellation of Halloween Fest, which was unanimously approved. 

Williams said the city is looking into other ways expenditures can be reduced, including looking at user fees and eliminating special events. 

“We’re going to continue to look at everything we do and identify some areas for possible changes to achieve some savings,” he said. “Halloween Fest was really a byproduct of COVID, and it was never intended to be permanent.” 

He said the city will save $85,000 by not having Halloween Fest, and there is nothing planned for Halloween to replace the festival.