The Westlake City Council voted unanimously at their Tuesday, July 1 meeting to set the city’s property tax rate unchanged at 4.7 mills for purposes of meeting the state’s Truth In Millage (TRIM) rate deadline.
However, by the time Westlake’s final fiscal year 2026 budget is adopted in September, they want to see it lower.
Once the TRIM rate is adopted, it can be decreased but not increased.
“People are desperately terrified of more taxes,” Mayor JohnPaul O’Connor said during a June 24 workshop. “I would like to lower the millage to something that the city can withstand but also gives our residents a break and shows we’re being fiscally responsible with their money.”
It would be the fourth straight year of millage rate decreases for the City of Westlake.
For fiscal year 2025, the millage rate was 4.7 mills, meaning the owner of a home with an assessed value of $550,000 and a $50,000 Homestead exemption paid approximately $2,350 in city property taxes.
The amount does not include other federal, state or county taxes, nor assessments from the Seminole Improvement District, which provides most of the city’s infrastructure, such as roads and drainage.
Whatever the fiscal year 2026 rate turns out to be, it will help fund a proposed $10,794,600 budget — only a $99,100 increase over the 2025 budget — with an operating budget of $8,724,400, an increase of $1,120,800.
Any millage reduction is expected to be realized through shaving money from the amount of reserve funds — $2.9 million — that City Manager Kenneth Cassel suggested in the budget proposal he presented at the workshop.
The reserve funds are set aside in case of an emergency, such as hurricane clean-up, and to be used to match state and federal grants as needed.
Any funds not used during the fiscal year are added to the city’s overall fund balance, that presently is $7.2 million, Cassel explained.
The fund balance also could be important in getting good bank loan rates for the construction of a planned city hall, he said, noting that negotiations are underway with the city’s largest landowner and developer Minto Communities USA for a centrally located piece of property where it could be built.
City offices are now located in a small building at 4001 Seminole Pratt Whitney Road, and council meetings are held in the Westlake Adventure Park Lodge.
If the tax rate stays at 4.7 mills, the fund balance account could have as much as $11 million in it by the end of the 2026 fiscal year, according to the budget plan.
“If you hold the line at this point in time, you’re going to be better set up for the future,” Cassel told the council, who pressed him to find a way to decrease the rate, even if only by a symbolic amount.
Meanwhile, the Seminole Improvement District (SID) is expected to pass a small assessment increase for fiscal year 2026 that will affect mostly the owners of larger homes, said Cassel, who also is SID’s manager.
Those homeowners likely will see a $40 to $50 increase, while the owners of smaller properties may see a $20 to $50 decrease, he said.
Those changes come in the wake of increases last year that saw SID assessments increase by almost $300 for some homeowners.
SID’s proposed budget for fiscal year 2026 is $7,253,020, an increase of $725,130 over 2025. SID supervisors will hold their regular monthly meetings, plus budget hearings, Aug. 4 and Sept. 8. For more information about SID meetings, call (561) 790-1742.
There will be another Westlake City Council budget workshop Tuesday, Aug. 5 at 5 p.m., ahead of a Planning & Zoning Board meeting at 5:30 p.m. and the regular council meeting at 6 p.m. The final budget will be approved in September, and the new fiscal year beings Oct. 1.
