TAMPA, FL. – Today Mayor Jane Castor presented a budget for Fiscal Year 2022 focused on the theme of Strengthening Tampa’s Foundation and utilizing new technology to help Tampa residents more easily see how their money is being spent on city services.
“A strong foundation – be it infrastructure, housing, fiscal strength, opportunity, or safety – is what enables a community like ours to be resilient in the face of challenges and ambitious when it comes to improving the quality of life for every neighborhood,” Mayor Castor said of the budget that keeps the tax rate level while significantly investing in critical needs like affordable housing, long-deferred infrastructure maintenance, and improving emergency medical response times by adding personnel, fire stations and rescue vehicles,” said Mayor Castor.
The FY2022 net budget is $1,802,092,727. This represents a $425.5 million net increase from the FY2021 budget of $1,376,630,839* mainly due to:
- A General Fund increase of approximately $26.8 million primarily due to negotiated labor contracts; increased fire and police and general employee pension contributions, fire and police healthcare trust payment, and other health insurance and benefits; additional staffing for general administration, planning and development and contract administration; increased funding for parks and recreation maintenance; additional staffing and vehicles for emergency medical services first responders program; and citywide technology improvements. This increase in the General Fund also includes the additional required contribution of approximately $3.9 million to the community redevelopment area trust funds.
- A $188.1 million increased in Enterprise Funds primarily due to expansion of Wastewater, Water and Solid Waste capital project program funding over FY2021.
- All other governmental funds increased by $163.0 million primarily due to increases for federal American Rescue Plan Act funding, transportation grants, and tax-exempt loan financing capital project funding.
- Governmental Debt Service funds increased of $41.7 million to pay for Stormwater and Facilities CIPs.
“The latest City of Tampa budget proposal makes history in taking budget transparency to the next level,” said Castor.
“Partnering with OpenGov, a leader in cloud technology for local governments, the city is making the budget available on a portal that invites residents to better understand the FY2022 budget, track spending towards major projects, access graphs, charts, other visualization data, and more. It also helps break down data silos between departments and empower the community to access meaningful metrics about fiscal spending and key initiatives citywide in just a few clicks,” Castor said.
“Our residents deserve to know how their tax dollars are being spent,” Mayor Castor said. “As good financial stewards, we want to make it as easy and transparent as possible for the public to engage with our budget process. OpenGov provides the 21st-century tools to visualize meaningful data that showcases how funds are spent to keep the city running and transform Tampa’s tomorrow.”
To see the entire proposed Fiscal Year 2022 budget click here.
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