GAINESVILLE, FL (352today.com) – The Gainesville City Commission approved a budget for the 2024 fiscal year that will raise your property taxes. 352today is taking a closer look at the numbers approved at the meeting on Thursday, Sept. 21.

Changes include increasing the budget by $2.1 million or 1.3%. To accomplish this, the commission voted to accept a proposed 29.2% millage rate increase. The millage rate is a value used to determine property taxes, according to the meeting agenda. It’s also now the highest millage rate in Alachua County, according to these numbers from the end of 2022.

The new Gainesville millage rate is 6.4297, meaning a property with a taxable value of $100,000 would generate $642.97 in property tax at the municipal level – up by $92.97 from last year.

How will this impact average homeowner’s pocketbook? According to U.S. Census data, the median owner-occupied housing value in Gainesville falls around $182,400. A house with this taxable value would generate $1,172.78 in property tax. That’s $169.58 more than last year’s taxes.

To calculate your home’s new municipal property tax, multiply its taxable value by 0.0064297.

This increase will reportedly generate an additional $15.4 million in property tax revenue. Since 2015, property tax values in Gainesville have grown by $4.5 billion or 80.5%.

The largest percentage of the 2024 budget’s revenue comes from property tax: 40.2%, to be exact. In the 2023 fiscal year, it made up just 30.8% of the budget.

In previous fiscal years, the Gainesville City Commission transferred funding from Gainesville Regional Utilities (GRU) to put toward other government activities. For the 2024 fiscal year, the state mandated they cut back on these transfers, and GRU funding decreased by 55.4% this year, from nearly $35 million in 2023 to just over $15 million in 2024. This is one of the commission’s main reasons for increasing the millage rate.

In a Facebook post, Gainesville Mayor Harvey Ward said, “The city will be doing more with less this year, and in some cases less with less. We’re depending more on partnership and collaboration and will have to say no far more often. We did significantly increase the public safety budgets.”

The 2024 fiscal year begins Oct. 1, 2023, and lasts through Sept. 30, 2024.