City official: ‘There is no fluff in our budget’
When state lawmakers proposed a constitutional amendment in June that could cut Florida’s homestead property tax, St. Cloud staff had already finished a version of next year’s budget—and had to start over.
At a workshop Monday afternoon, St. Cloud City Council members got a look at the revised $231 million budget, which features significant cuts in many departments’ general funds while maintaining the city’s current millage rate of 5.1128 for the 14th year in a row.
City Manager Veronica Miller said staff’s goal was to prepare a budget that used no prior year fund balance to balance the new operating budget. “[We should] instead only use fund balance to do one-time projects, which is how fund balance is supposed to be used,” she said.
According to City Finance Director Jeff Cooper, that is what they did—for the first time in 31 years.
“The city, over the past thirty plus years, has utilized prior year fund balance—which I refer to as our savings—to balance our annual budget,” he said. “That is not the best practice. Although it worked when we were small, now that we have property tax reform potential on the horizon, we sped up our goal,” he continued. “Our goal was to get it to zero in the next three years, and that’s where we went back to the drawing board. In ‘26-27, we are using zero savings to balance this year’s budget.”
While the total city budget increased 7.7%, individual departments will decrease by as much as 54.9%—as is the case for the City Council’s budget, which went from $786,934 to $355,125. Other decreases include the City Manager’s office budget, which will be reduced by 51.1%; Communications by 21.4%; and Human Resources by 27.6%.
Departments that show increases include the Legal Department, which will add two new positions; Fire Department, which will add 48 new firefighters with new stations about to open; and Finance Department, whose audit contract is going out to bid.
Cut budget items included travel and per diem, memberships, promotional items, community support and grants, software, and uniforms. Seven positions will be left vacant or unfunded, and employee tuition reimbursement will be cut by more than half.
Deputy City Manager Scott Davidoff said the budget is now as low as it can go.
“Any future changes—and future reductions from property tax reform or anything else that may come down the pike—now you are talking about reductions in public service.
“There is no fluff in our budget. It doesn’t exist. This is as tight as you can possibly get without having that reduction in service that the residents will see.”
The council must formally adopt the millage rate and budget at upcoming public hearings on Sept. 10 and 17—before the new fiscal year begins Oct. 1.
