The Millage Went Up. On Longboat Key, Some Tax Bills Are Still Going Down.

Every property owner on Longboat Key is looking at the same headline this month: the Town Commission raised the base tax rate. What almost nobody is talking about is that a Gulfside homeowner and a Bayside homeowner just got two different answers to the same vote, and neither answer has much to do with the number everyone quoted.

The Town Commission gave its first approval to a $24.58 million budget and a base millage increase from 1.960 to 1.999 at its September 14 meeting, the first meeting since a two-month summer recess. Final adoption is set for the September 28 hearing. Described locally as a 1.5% bump, it is small enough that Commissioner Gary Coffin illustrated it with a prop.

"That's basically three bottles of a decent wine."

Coffin brought an actual bottle of Menage et Trois to the June meeting where the commission set its maximum allowable rate, making the point that a few tenths of a mill translates to grocery-store money for most households. He was also the lone vote against a bigger increase back in June, having pushed for something closer to 2.0648 mills to build reserves faster. The commission landed in between.

That number, though, is not what determines whether your total bill goes up or down this year. Three other moving pieces do that, and they land differently depending on your exact address.

Same Vote, Different Bill Depending on the Side of the Island

Longboat Key doesn't tax Gulfside and Bayside properties at the same combined rate. Beach renourishment costs get split unevenly between the two districts, with Gulfside properties historically carrying a larger share since they front the beach directly. This year, that split produced a genuine split in outcomes.

The town's debt on the last beach renourishment project has been paid off. In its place, the town is shifting to a new funding model expected to generate about $2.5 million a year toward the next renourishment cycle, and the millage needed to raise that money is lower than the old debt-service rate for both districts. But because Gulfside pays a bigger share of beach costs to begin with, its cut is bigger too.

A Gulfside owner's total tax rate is set to fall even though the base rate everyone read about went up. A Bayside owner's total rate is set to rise, and by more than the base millage increase alone would suggest, because their beach millage decrease is smaller in dollar terms. Same commission, same meeting, same vote count, opposite direction depending on which side of Gulf of Mexico Drive you're on.

The Line That Wasn't There Last Year

There's a second variable that has nothing to do with which beach you're closer to: whether your property sits on or near a canal the town is planning to dredge.

Commissioners approved a new 0.0603 mill canal maintenance rate as part of this budget, a townwide line that adds roughly $60 a year to a $1 million home's bill regardless of where that home sits on the island. That part applies to everyone.

A separate mechanism applies only to parcels inside the specific canal basins slated for the town's dredging program. Those owners are set to see the program's first special assessments, roughly $620 each, land on their November tax bills. It's a project-specific charge tied to the actual dredging work rather than the general maintenance millage, which means two neighbors a few blocks apart can see very different totals depending on whether their particular canal segment is in this first phase of work.

If your property backs up to a canal, the number on your November bill is worth checking against both of these separately. The townwide 0.0603 millage is baked into everyone's rate. The $620 assessment is not.

Why the Reserve Fund Needed Refilling

None of this is happening in a vacuum. Longboat Key's own budget policy calls for reserves equal to 120 to 180 days of operating expenses, roughly $8 million to $12 million. Over the past decade, the town's reserve balance dipped below that $8 million floor exactly once, in 2025, in the aftermath of Hurricanes Helene and Milton.

Outgoing Town Manager Howard Tipton made rebuilding that cushion his closing argument. At his final meeting on September 14, the same session that gave first approval to the new budget, Tipton told commissioners that grants and federal reimbursements have become less reliable and that building reserves through the tax rate was the prudent move. The proposed 2027 budget adds $808,735 back into fund balance reserves. September 14 was also Tipton's last day after 45 years in Florida public service; incoming Town Manager George Landry, who came from St. Lucie County, started the following Monday and inherited the tree code rewrite as his first live controversy when the commission voted to send it to a workshop instead of a vote.

A separate analysis published in the paper's opinion pages, working from a decade of town budget documents, found that general fund spending has climbed roughly 50% over ten years and per-capita spending about 37%, both faster than population growth or inflation alone would explain. Staffing has grown from 117 employees in 2017 to 127 planned for 2026-27. None of that is unusual for a barrier island rebuilding after back-to-back hurricane seasons, but it's the backdrop against which the reserve-rebuilding argument is being made.

The Vote That Could Undo All of This

Here's the part that makes the September 28 hearing feel almost beside the point. Florida voters decide on Amendment 3 in November, a measure that would substantially increase the state's homestead exemption for primary residences. Tipton's own budget letter estimated the town could lose approximately $705,000 in property tax revenue in the first year if it passes, climbing to as much as $1.4 million annually after that.

That's not an abstract number for Longboat Key. The town has an interlocal agreement with Sarasota County to help fund the new Longboat Key Library, already paying $1.6 million toward it in 2025 with scheduled installments of $944,167 in 2026 and further payments through 2029. At the September 14 meeting, Assistant Town Manager Isaac Brownman told commissioners the county has made clear it will not build the library on Longboat Key at all if Amendment 3 passes, regardless of how far planning has already progressed. The Planning and Zoning Board reviewed site development plans for that same library just a day later, with county staff describing plans for building permits in October.

So the town's own math for this budget cycle assumes a level of property tax revenue that a statewide ballot measure could remove five weeks after the September 28 vote finalizes it. Whatever rate the commission adopts this month is a starting point, not a settled figure, for anyone trying to project their 2027 bill.

What This Actually Means for Your Bill

If you own on Longboat Key, the useful exercise isn't reading the base millage number in isolation. It's checking a short list against your specific parcel:

• Whether you're in the Gulfside or Bayside beach millage district, since that alone determines whether your total rate is projected to rise or fall this year
• Whether your address falls inside one of the canal basins in the current dredging phase, which would add the $620 special assessment on top of the townwide 0.0603 canal maintenance millage everyone pays
• Whether your property is homesteaded, since Florida's Save Our Homes cap limits how fast a homesteaded property's taxable value can climb even when millage rates move
• How you'd want to vote on Amendment 3 in November, given the town's own estimate of what it would cost in lost revenue and the library project's fate tied directly to that outcome

The Longboat Key neighborhood has always required more local knowledge than a single median price or tax rate can capture, and this budget cycle is a clean example of why. The same commission vote produces different outcomes depending on your side of the island, your proximity to a canal, and a ballot measure that hasn't been decided yet.

If you want a clearer read on how any of this lines up against your specific property, from your beach millage district to whether your parcel sits in the current dredging phase, Ryan Miller can walk through it against your actual tax notice and pull a current home valuation so you're working from real numbers rather than the headline rate.