LAKE COUNTY, Fla. – Lake County’s property appraiser, is requesting an additional $1.2 million to increase the office’s budget, which currently stands just under $5 million, but not everyone is on board.
Property Appraiser, Mark Jordan, said the budget boost is necessary to keep pace with the county’s fast growth and to bring the office’s funding more in line with similar-sized Florida counties.
“It’s significant growth that’s the issue here and our budget simply cannot keep up with that,” Jordan said.
The proposed increase would in part go toward funding new positions.
“This would be our first IT person, which is we’re beyond the adolescent stages,” Jordan said. “So we certainly need stuff like that. There’s additional field appraisers, an additional commercial appraiser. We only have one commercial appraiser with nearly 15,000 commercial parcels.”
According to data Jordan submitted to the Florida Department of Revenue for his budget request, several Florida counties that are comparable in size to Lake County, when it comes to population and number of properties, have bigger budgets.
The documents show Lake County in 2024 had a population of 432,796 and 238,943 parcels, and a budget of $4,787,766.
Escambia County in Northwest Florida had a population of 334,119 and 185,023 parcels with a budget of $7,806,975. Another example includes Marion County with a population of 413,951 and 303,962 parcels with a $6,595,757 budget.
However, Lake County Commissioner Anthony Sabatini strongly criticized the request as unprecedented.
“We’ve never seen any constitutional officer ever ask for this much money and to do this at a time in which the entire theme of the Republican Party of Florida in our leadership in Tallahassee is to reduce spending is almost comical,” Sabatini said.
When asked if some budget expansion might be reasonable given the county’s growth, Sabatini said a modest increase of 2 - 8% would be understandable, citing inflation as a factor. But he called the 28% increase “clearly just shenanigans.”
Jordan expects the state Department of Revenue to decide soon how much funding his office will receive. After that, either the county or Jordan could appeal the decision.