SANFORD, Fla. – Sanford has been down this road before — twice, in fact. Now, with a sweeping Florida property tax reform measure headed to voters this November, city leaders are once again weighing whether a fire assessment fee is the answer to a looming budget crisis.
The City Commission took up the question Monday evening during a work session focused on CS/HJR 1-F, a proposed constitutional amendment that could cost Sanford as much as $6 million in fiscal year 2028 and $9.3 million in fiscal year 2029, for a combined two-year hit of $15.3 million.
Our News 6 team spoke one-on-one with Mayor Art Woodruff ahead of the meeting.
“If the amendment passes in November, we’ll have an 18% decrease in revenue over the next two years,” Woodruff said. “Despite lots of people thinking there’s a whole lot of waste in local government, there is not 18% of our budget going to waste.”
The city will face a stark choice: cut services or find new ways to fund them. A fire assessment fee — a flat charge applied to all properties based on use and square footage — is one option.
A fee with a complicated history
The fire assessment fee is not a new idea in Sanford. The city has considered and rejected it twice.
The first attempt came in 2008, when the proposal included an offsetting decrease in the millage rate. On paper, it seemed like a reasonable trade. In practice, it wasn’t. Lower-value homeowners would have seen a net increase in their costs, while businesses would have come out ahead. Commissioners rejected it.
“Homesteaded properties actually would pay more in the fire fee than they paid in property taxes,” Woodruff said. “It evens the cost out equitably. But because of the homestead exemption, homestead properties actually end up paying more than they would if they were paying property taxes.”
The idea returned in 2025, scaled back to cover only the fire department’s capital costs — roughly $2.5 million a year to replace fire engines, rescue squads and equipment. That version also failed to move forward, but for a different reason.
“It was really a matter of timing because we had already adopted our budget and had already adopted the money we needed for that year’s capital,” Woodruff said. “And so, when people asked us, ‘do you absolutely have to have this this year?’ The answer really was no. And we couldn’t honestly say otherwise.”
Why this time is different
What makes the third conversation different is what’s on the horizon. If CS/HJR 1-F passes, the financial pressure will be immediate — and unavoidable.
Woodruff said a fire fee wouldn’t just protect the fire department. It would help stabilize the entire city budget.
“If we adopt the fire fee, that allows us to shift money elsewhere in the budget,” he said. “Saying that we’re doing the fire fee so that we can keep the fire department — yes. But it also would give us funding for other things too. So, it’s replacing the funding we’re losing.”
Without that replacement funding, Woodruff said public safety itself would not be immune.
“I don’t see that we maintain the police and fire departments the way they are without some additional funding,” he said. “It’s easy to say, ‘prioritize them.’ But when you’re cutting funding, you still have to have the money to do it.”
What the city is asking for now
City Manager Norton N. Bonaparte, Jr. and Finance Director Cynthia Lindsay are not asking the Commission to adopt a fire assessment fee — not yet. They are asking for direction on whether staff should begin preparing the groundwork so that agreements could be ready to execute after the November election results are in.
Even if the Commission agrees to explore the fee, Woodruff cautioned that this isn’t something that can happen overnight.
“You can’t just show up next week and vote to have it,” he said. “You have to have the study done. Even though we did it a year ago, we’ll have to have that study redone. And there’s state statute that says exactly the process you have to go through, exactly what the letter has to say that’s sent out to everybody, and what the timing is to do that.
Woodruff said he personally supports getting prepared — but with one important caveat.
“I think I would advocate for being ready, but it sort of depends on what happens in November,” he said. “If taxpayers say, ‘hey, we want to cut services,’ for us to turn around and say, ‘well, we’re going to get the money from you somewhere else’ — doesn’t seem like the right way to go.”
He also noted that the statewide nature of the vote adds complexity to how Sanford should respond.
“It could be Sanford residents; Seminole County residents are opposed to it, but the rest of the state passes it,” Woodruff said. “I think all that goes into the thinking of what we all have to do.”