Oviedo residents may have to pay more taxes to fund the fire department

OVIEDO, Fla. — Residents in Oviedo may be asked to pay more in order to help fund the fire department.

That’s because the city’s property taxes haven’t kept up with the costs to run the department over the last 10 years.

The Oviedo City Council is taking up the matter during its meeting on Tuesday night.

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The council will take up a first reading of an ordinance to create the fire district tonight.

If they do eventually enact the fire district, property owners should expect to pay more in taxes to the city, although how much they will pay is still the burning question.

Oviedo Mayor Megan Sladek told Channel 9 that Oviedo doesn’t have a spending problem, it has an income problem, and that only about 65 % of the land in Oviedo is taxable due to the number of people who have homestead exemptions in the city.

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Sladek said that property taxes are capped at 3% each year, which does nothing for the city’s bottom line when it comes to paying for certain services like the police department, and fire department which the city’s general fund can’t completely fund each year.

The city was short $2 million of the $5.5 million it cost to fund the police and fire department last year, so the city ends up pulling money from other areas to cover the loss, Sladek said.

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“The money is shrinking, in 2008 we had to go to the rollback rate and never went back, because the state told us to, so we dropped our taxes and we never recovered because the prices of homes went down and everybody got really locked in at this artificially low rate, and we’ll never fix it without some creativity,” Sladek said.

Sladek told Channel 9 that the council hasn’t agreed on what method to use to create the fee homeowners would pay for the fire district.

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The fee could be as low as $180 per household or as high as $350 for higher square footage homes.

Sladek said if the district is created that will be determined as they go through the process.

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