OVIEDO, Fla. — Over the past 20 years, the city of Oviedo has grown into a sprawling community full of parks and quiet neighborhoods that have attracted many of its approximately 40,000 current residents.
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That sprawl is the cause of a looming funding crisis, Mayor Megan Sladek said, in which the city needs to solve a budget shortfall using options that few are likely to be enthusiastic about.
“[I’m] mystified with how we got to this place,” she said.
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The city currently spends about $4 million per year maintaining its infrastructure, Sladek reported. Consultants hired to examine the health of the city’s development calculated that Oviedo will need to increase that budget to $19 million annually once the majority of the city’s roads begin to reach the end of their life spans.
The reason for this $15 million shortage isn’t waste, nor is it unique to Oviedo. Many suburban roads lined with single-family homes don’t generate enough property tax revenue to pay for the road’s full life cycle, including replacement. Due to Sladek’s self-described trait as a land use management nerd, the Seminole County community is one of the few that has started talking about fixing the deficit.
The easiest way to address the gap would be to double the city’s property taxes, Sladek said, adding that the average home’s bill would rise to $1,800. However, any tax increase – much less doubling – typically lands like a hatchback in a deep pothole.
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To get around this, the consultants offered an initial set of five proposals that, in some combination, could raise the necessary amount of funds, though Sladek was under no illusion that any would be popular:
- A dead-end street fee for people who live on a cul-de-sac that other city taxpayers would have no use for.
- An infrastructure fee based on storm water drainage sub-basins.
- A different fee that would cost more the further a property was from the city’s core infrastructure. Sladek estimated that the fees would range from $50 to $90 per person.
- Privatizing little-used roads and sidewalks, allowing the property owners to foot the bill for their upkeep.
- Increasing the city’s population by 170%, or approximately 68,000 people, without adding any new roads. In other words, increasing the city’s density.
“We don’t have any dedicated revenue source that we can count on for infrastructure, but we can count on that infrastructure to fail,” Sladek said. “So we need something we can count on to maintain it.”
The mayor is already looking for other options that would be more palatable. She said she was in talks with the owners of the Oviedo mall property to potentially add apartments there, given that the property could handle the traffic and it currently generates a relatively low amount of tax revenue.
$15 MILLION dollars a year. That's about how much less we're collecting in taxes/fees per year than we need to properly...
Posted by Megan Sladek on Monday, November 29, 2021
Reaction to her initial announcement was swift, but not brutal. Many residents seemed to understand the conundrum the city faced and offered their preferences and suggestions. Generally, the reactions seemed to favor adding density as long as it wasn’t on a particular traffic-plagued main avenue.
“None of the solutions that were thrown out sound truly great,” Eric Dackes said, immediately after being told about the proposals. “I don’t see any of those things even combined as really providing everything.”
Sladek said the report came at a good time. Next year, Oviedo’s planners will look to finalize the city’s comprehensive plan, which lays out how the next 15 years of development should go.
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The mayor said she posted about the study immediately after she got the results to be transparent about the task ahead of her and to prepare citizens for upcoming discussions and debates. She said it was important that the city be proactive about the issue, rather than reacting once bills began to pile up.
“We have to be grownups about this,” she said. “I don’t want to tax generations upon generations for our failure to step up and take care of our toys.”
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