Though the increase in the city’s property-tax rate may be modest to many, the opposition to the higher levy and the spending program that it supports was well beyond merely modest.

Over the objections of several speakers, the Deltona City Commission Sept. 16 adopted a 2024-25 millage that is lower than the rate now in effect. Yet, the newly set rate amounts to a tax increase. Whereas the levy for the fiscal year now ending is 7.35 mills, the ad valorem tax rate in Deltona for the new fiscal year will be 7 mills, or $7 per $1,000 of taxable value on land, homes, commercial buildings and farms inside the city limits. That is too much for some.

“It’s people struggling to help their families now,” Kathy Bryan told the commission.

“We don’t have the Deltona wages to support it [city budget]. We just don’t,” Christian O’Brien said. “But you go outside and try to get a job around here. You’re looking at $14 an hour, $16 an hour, $18 an hour — that won’t support these taxes.”

“I think what you’re going to start seeing is people selling their homes and just fleeing,” he concluded.

“Bit when we’re talking about people trying to put groceries on the table, … and I know if you really look at a budget and you want to cut down some things that are not absolutely necessary … I am really hoping that you change in the future,” Diane Anthony, a retired teacher, told the City Commission. “When people try to show up, and then they get up here and talk, and they plead with you to listen to them, and it doesn’t count.”

“People are struggling already,” former City Commissioner David Sosa said. “You know, you’ve got people choosing between eating, getting groceries, getting prescriptions, putting gas in their car — but you guys want to raise their taxes.”

Members of the commission defended the spending and taxation plans as necessary actions for the good of Deltona. Commissioner Davison Heriot opposed calls to reduce the millage to the rollback figure.

“I just don’t think that is the responsible thing to do,” he said.

The rollback figure is the tax rate that, if levied, would generate ad valorem revenues equal to those of the preceding fiscal year, without taking into account new construction or annexations. The rollback rate for Deltona in the latest tax roll is 6.7730 mills, or about $6.77 per $1,000 of taxable value.

Any figure higher than the rollback amounts to a tax increase, and it must, by state law, be advertised as such. The 7-mill number equates to a rate increase of 3.35 percent over the rollback.

Citing needs for more stormwater-control outlays and improvements in the city’s parks, Heriot noted, “We’ve got a lot of work to do.”

Commissioner Dana McCool likewise supported the budget, the millage recommended by City Manager Dale “Doc” Dougherty and his staff, along with a higher stormwater assessment. That annual assessment, which appears on the property-tax bills, will rise from $128 per standard home to $170.

“I’m looking ahead 10 years. I’m sorry that it hurts today,” she told the audience and her colleagues. “I never make decisions up here for popular political reasons.”

The decision to set the property-tax rate at 7 mills was approved with a 4-3 split vote. Heriot and McCool were joined by Commissioners Maritza Avila-Vazquez and Troy Shimkus to form the majority. Mayor Santiago Avila Jr., Vice Mayor Jody Lee Storozuk and Commissioner Stephen Colwell voted no.

“I can’t in good conscience vote for this millage rate because I know that residents are struggling,” the mayor said. 

The vote on the budget was a lopsided 6-1, with Avila on the losing side.

That rounded-off budget totals $147.9 million. The general fund, which is that part of the budget that is covered by ad valorem taxes, is $71.1 million. The general fund includes such things as law enforcement, fire and emergency-medical services, animal control and code enforcement, and parks and recreation. Accounts for special revenues, including federal grant funds, as well as capital spending and enterprise funds for utilities and stormwater management, amount to about $75 million.

The new 2025 fiscal year for Deltona and all other cities and the counties in Florida begins Oct. 1.