Before the late vote, angry residents bombarded members with horror stories of crippling tax bills.
DeLAND -- Volusia County Council members, bombarded by a record turnout of angry tax protesters, thrilled the standing-room-only crowd by adopting a "rollback" property-tax rate that will require millions in dramatic cuts.
By adopting a rate of $4.26 per $1,000, the council won't be able to collect at least $25 million in revenue that was initially proposed as part of County Manager Jim Dinneen's $649 million spending plan.
All seven council members voted for that tax cut and others, including the library tax and mosquito-control tax.
County Chairman Frank Bruno said he voted for the big cuts even though he worries about the impact it may have on social services and reserves, which the county needed for the 2004 hurricanes.
He said many capital projects would have to be placed on the backburner.
"I feel the pain just like everybody else," Bruno said. "Maybe we needed to do it this year."
Don Woods, president-elect of the New Smyrna Beach Board of Realtors, said the community outcry made a difference.
"It's the only way you're going to get anywhere," Woods said right before council members took a vote. "People have been too complacent."
The full impact of the county's dramatic tax cut wasn't known late Thursday. But Dinneen said the cuts may mean the county will have to put off the expansion of the Deltona library.
Many of the protesters, including investors, real estate brokers and others who packed the county's final budget hearing Thursday night, were pleased with the council's actions.
Many who had also appeared at a budget hearing two weeks ago again ordered the county to adopt a budget equal to last year -- about $579 million. The next budget year starts Oct. 1. But county staffers late Thursday couldn't estimate how much the budget will shrink because of the last-minute tax cuts.
The current rate for the largest property tax levied by the county is $5.30 per $1,000 of taxable value. The so-called "rollback" rate is the amount that would raise the same amount of revenue as last year.
In adopting the rollback rate of $4.26 per $1,000, council members cut Dinneen's proposed rate of $4.95 per $1,000 of taxable value.
Residents hammered council members with pleas for deep cuts. "I hear you're trying to offer us a pittance when we asked you for true tax reform," said Harold Young, a leader of the recently formed Volusia Tax Reform, a group that has led an aggressive anti-tax campaign in recent weeks.
That group had arranged for several busloads of people to attend the public hearing, which began at 6 p.m. and wrapped up around 10:30 p.m.
"Go back again and seriously cut back the budget," said Steve Allison, a retired manager of an auto-supply company who said the taxes on a small lot he owns in New Smyrna Beach have quadrupled.
Before residents recounted horror stories of how tax bills had crippled businesses and forced people from their homes, Dinneen offered two proposals for cuts. Both called for cutting the tax rate that generates money for the county's general fund and the tax rate that helps pay for local libraries.
The first proposal called for slicing the tax rates by a combined 10 cents, 8 cents of which would come from the tax which would have required the council to cut its budget by about $3.7 million. If council members chose the second proposal, they would have to slice the two tax rates a total of 20 cents and the budget by about $7.3 million.
The council had said during a business meeting earlier in the day that they wouldn't decide during the budget hearing how to make the cuts. But Dinneen said in a letter he sent to council members Wednesday that he intended to take at least most of the money from the county and library's emergency funds.
Tax increases have hit particularly hard for business owners, people with vacant land or rental property and those who just moved. Owners of homestead properties are protected from property value spikes because of Florida's Save Our Homes constitutional amendment, which caps assessment hikes to no more than than 3 percent a year.
Dinneen has said taxing authorities need to work together to bring down tax rates, because one agency alone won't make a big difference. If the county chopped $25 million from its budget, it could drastically affect services and property owners wouldn't see a big drop in their bills, he has said.
For example, a homeowner without a homestead exemption, whose bill would average about $4,000 a year, would save $121 at most, he said.
Denise-Marie Balona can be reached at dbalona@orlandosentinel.com or 386-851-7916.
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