Your property-tax rate will probably go down this year in Miami-Dade. The bill won’t
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Budget Rebound
Federal dollars have local governments in better shape this tax season. Here’s what it means to you.
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More money, more projects. Miami-Dade governments bouncing back with help from the feds
Your property-tax rate will probably go down this year in Miami-Dade. The bill won’t
Your tax bill too high? Think the property appraiser made a mistake? Here’s how to appeal
Did you receive your Miami-Dade property tax notice? Here’s how to read it
What will changes in property taxes mean on your 2021 bill? Use our city-by-city guide
For a look at the potential consequences of the 2021 property-tax season in Miami-Dade County, grab a yardstick and drive past the weedy entrance of Homestead’s Mayor Roscoe Warren Municipal Park to measure the uncut playground grass topping seven inches.
“My phone doesn’t stop ringing,” Willie Johnson Jr., a city parks employee who oversees mowing crews for Homestead, said of the summer months. “People ask: Why is the grass so high?”
City administrators blame a cost squeeze worsened by the loss of cheap landscaping crews from a nearby state prison during the COVID-19 pandemic. Earlier in the summer, they floated higher property-tax rates to generate more dollars for the Parks Department.
In July, city council members approved a proposed tax rate that’s 23% higher than the current rate of $6.65 for every $1,000 of a property’s taxable value.
Homestead’s proposed $8.17 rate for city operations and debt payments would generate more than $4 million in new tax revenue, with about $1 million covering more hours for landscaping crews, hiring several janitorial workers to tackle cleaning and other chores in recreational centers, park bathrooms and other facilities, plus other Parks expenses.
The higher proposed tax rate puts Homestead in the municipal minority this year in Miami-Dade County, where most local governments are targeting flat rates and counting on higher real estate values to provide moderate boosts in property-tax spending.
A Miami Herald analysis of data published by the Office of the Property Appraiser found 90% of Miami-Dade homeowners will see slightly lower combined property-tax rates in 2021, mostly driven by a dip in what the county school system plans to charge this year.
In Broward County, it’s more mixed, with 60% of residential properties seeing decreased tax rates and about 40% seeing higher ones — mostly due to a proposed increase in the rate for a property tax that funds public hospitals in the northern part of the county.
But that won’t lower tax bills for most homeowners.
With taxable values higher across South Florida, Miami-Dade homeowners should expect to pay more, with the average increase in both counties at roughly 2%, according to the Herald analysis.
That’s all based on proposed property-tax or “millage” rates, which Florida law requires local governments to establish by August in time for the mailing of tax notices across the state.
The Truth in Millage statements (best known as “TRIM notices”) notify property owners what their tax bills will be if local governments adopt proposed tax rates, giving the public a chance to weigh in on taxes and spending during budget hearings in September.
In Homestead, the proposed tax-rate increase may not survive that process.
While the Herald analysis found the average Homestead homeowner would be on track for an 8% increase in the 2021 property-tax bill, city administrators on Aug. 24 released an updated draft budget with flat rates and modest bumps in spending for parks and the police department, which had requested 10 new positions.
“What we did this year is we set it intentionally high to give wiggle room as we consider some improvements to city services,” said Zackery Good, assistant to Homestead’s city manager.
Homestead commissioners take final votes on tax rates in September as part of the budget approval process for the 2022 fiscal year, which spends property taxes that come due starting in November. It’s one of dozens of decisions across South Florida that will decide how much local property owners will pay toward government services.
With federal COVID-19 relief providing a financial jolt and property values holding steady during the pandemic, most local governments are keeping tax rates flat.
For this story, the Herald calculated average taxable values for all 65 municipalities and unincorporated areas in Broward and Miami-Dade by increasing 2020 levels by 1.4%. That is the state’s inflation allowance for taxable values on 2021 bills for residential properties qualified for the state’s Save our Homes program.
We then combined those values with proposed rates for the 15 property taxes that can be charged across Miami-Dade and the 15 in Broward to calculate average tax bills for 2021 and 2020.
These are general findings based on average taxable values. For a similar analysis of any property in Miami-Dade, check out the Office of the Property Appraiser’s Tax Comparison calculator, which will show how much each proposed rate will cost or save the property owner. Broward and Miami-Dade both post TRIM notices online for 2021, which have breakdowns of tax rates and amounts.
Some of the questions our analysis answered include:
Who has the lowest local property-tax rate?
To compare municipal rates equally, the Herald first took property taxes charged by municipalities and the municipal-services tax charged on properties outside city limits.
In Miami-Dade, we combined those rates with county fire and library taxes charged within each municipal area. Most city residents pay those rates, too, but not if their city has its own fire department (Key Biscayne does, along with Miami, Hialeah, Miami Beach and Coral Gables) or its own library system (Hialeah and six other cities).
In Broward, an important variable in tax bills are two hospital property taxes — one funding public hospitals in the southern part of the county, one funding them in the northern segment. While the southern hospital district is proposing a lower tax rate this year, the northern district has proposed an 11% increase. A spokesperson for the northern district called the proposed tax rate a “starting point” for the board’s upcoming budget votes. Taxing authorities set their tax rates by the start of October in South Florida.
Municipal rates, which fund services typically provided by a local government, also drive changes in the total rate taxpayers see on their bills each year.
Key Biscayne, the oceanfront island village where the average home is worth $1.2 million, enjoys Miami-Dade’s lowest municipal tax rate — $3.61 for every $1,000 of taxable value, based on the proposed 2021 rates.
On the other end of Miami-Dade’s municipal-tax spectrum: Biscayne Park, with a rate of $12.40 for every $1,000 of taxable value, a rate that includes the county fire and library taxes. Biscayne Park is a bedroom community that relies on the county for fire and library services, and has no taxes generated from commercial real estate.
That leaves the village of 3,100 residents dependent on single-family homes for its tax base, without the windfalls that come with constructing new condo towers or the uncapped taxable value growth that shopping centers and apartment buildings bring.
“It’s pretty simple: We’re 100% residential,” Village Manager Mario Diaz said of Biscayne Park’s chart-topping municipal rate. “The community wants to stay a little urban village.”
What’s going on with the rolled-back rate?
Florida law defines a tax increase as any time a local government sets a property-tax rate at a level that will generate more dollars from existing properties than it did the prior year. Keeping revenues flat requires adopting a “rolled-back rate,” which mostly limits additional property-tax revenue to new construction.
Most governments ignore the rolled-back rate, and count on rising taxable values to generate extra dollars with flat rates.
In Broward, none of the municipalities proposed operating tax rates below the rolled-back rate. Two of Miami-Dade’s municipal governments did: Medley, which proposed a lower operating rate in 2021, and Sunny Isles Beach, which proposed a flat tax rate.
This is the sixth year that Sunny Isles Beach has proposed a tax amount below the rolled-back rate, according to city documents, as a development boom continues to boost government coffers.
The Office of the Property Appraiser reports more than $1 billion in new condominium construction in Sunny Isles Beach for this budget year — more than in Miami and Miami Beach combined.
Does a low tax rate mean a low tax bill?
Opa-locka homeowners pay one of the highest municipal tax rates in the county — $12.35 per $1,000 of taxable value when county library and fire taxes are added in, just behind Biscayne Park’s rate of $12.40.
But with some of the lowest property values in Miami-Dade, Opa-locka residents also pay some of the smallest tax bills in the county. In the city of nearly 16,000 people, the average Opa-locka homeowner should expect to pay about $1,130 in property taxes this year.
On the other end of the taxation spectrum: Indian Creek Village, a municipal enclave of fewer than 100 people, where Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump are believed to be building a new home. The village’s tax rate for municipal services of $9 per $1,000 taxable puts it in the middle for Miami-Dade, but the average tax bill of $250,411 has no competition for the No. 1 spot.
Will my tax bill go down in 2021?
Florida law puts a lid on how much a tax bill can grow for the typical homeowner. The Save Our Homes law caps growth in taxable values at the rate of inflation up to 3%, provided it’s a primary residence and the owner signed up for the program. (Not signing up can cost a homeowner thousands of dollars a year. Details for signing up are here.)
This year, the state-set inflation cap is 1.4%, meaning the typical homeowner should see a 1.4% increase in a property’s taxable value.
Even if a real estate market is soft or declining, most longtime homeowners have built up a significant gap between a property’s market value and its taxable value. The taxable value only declines once the market value has fallen below that cushion.
Only one Miami-Dade municipality proposed a local tax rate low enough to overcome a bump in taxable values to generate a lower average tax bill.
In Medley, a municipality of fewer than 1,000 people, commercial land owners pay the bulk of the property taxes. The county says there are 81 single-family homes in Medley, but 678 industrial parcels. All properties are on track for a 19% drop in the town’s municipal operating rate — enough to bring the overall tax bill down nearly 2% for the average homeowner.
“Times are tough,” Mayor Roberto Martell said. “We’re trying to be more frugal.”
In Cutler Bay, where about 25% of the town’s revenue comes from property taxes, the proposed operating rate is $2.83 per $1,000 of taxable value, an increase from the current rate of $2.62 per $1,000.
Cutler Bay town manager Rafael Casals said the higher proposed tax rate is a response to the influx of young families moving to the town, who require more services like parks and programming.
The new budget also adds weekend and night code compliance officers, as well as a part-time building official who will be a city employee, not a contracted engineer, to oversee inspection services.
In Homestead, the potential higher tax rate was floated as a fix to the city’s higher landscaping costs. Costs are up after the nearby Dade Correctional Institution, a state prison, pulled back on inmate work crews to mow the grass along municipal roads.
The inmate work crews are a bargain for Homestead, which paid less than $60,000 a year for a crew of four or five workers year-round, said Pedro Reynaldos, director of the city’s Parks Department.
“They basically just charge us the guard’s salary,” Reynaldos said.
Florida’s Corrections Department cited staff shortages during the pandemic in telling local governments they couldn’t provide the kind of prison labor available in the past, upending Homestead’s mowing schedule. “We had five crews pre-COVID that would handle everything from litter and trash to a lot of supplemental mowing,” Reynaldos said.
With more property-tax revenue in its proposed budget, Parks planned to hire a new “beautification” crew to start regular deep cleaning of over-used picnic shelters, bathrooms and other facilities, plus pay a contractor for extra mowing schedules to keep the grass from looking shaggy during the summer rainy season.
Reynaldos said he’s frequently hearing from residents complaining the grass looks tidy outside private developments, while roadsides maintained by the city appear neglected.
“We don’t pay for the same frequency,” he said of mowing runs. “If you can’t increase the budget, you can’t increase the frequency.”
Miami Herald staff writer Samantha Gross contributed to this report.
This story was originally published August 29, 2021 at 6:00 AM.
