The Jacksonville City Council approves the preliminary property tax millage rate included my Mayor Donna Deegan's proposed $2 billion budget. | File photo
Published on July 22, 2025 at 9:34 pm
Free local news and info, in your inbox at 6 a.m. M-F. Sign up for the Jacksonville Today newsletter.
When property tax notices are sent to Jacksonville residents in August, they will show a millage rate unchanged from last year, but some city lawmakers say they’re leaving the door open for a cut this year.
The Jacksonville City Council’s 17-1 vote Tuesday night caps the city’s millage rate – the number used to calculate property tax bills – for the 2025-26 fiscal year at 11.3169 mills. That’s $11.3169 per $1,000 of assessed taxable value, or $1,697.54 on a home with an assessed value of $200,000 and a $50,000 homestead exemption. Mayor Donna Deegan also kept the rate even in her $2 billion proposed 2025-26 budget.
Jacksonville Today thanks our sponsors. Become one.
The millage rate for the Beaches would be 8.0262, and the town of Baldwin’s rate would be 9.5260.
Some in council leadership say they’re still interested in pulling the rate down, though.
Council Vice President Nick Howland and members Terrance Freeman and Will Lahnen on Tuesday joined President Kevin Carrico, Finance Committee Chair Raul Arias and member Ron Salem, who previously publicly expressed support for considering a drop in the rate.
Jacksonville Today thanks our sponsors. Become one.
Carrico, Arias and Salem recently told Jacksonville Today they will try to lower the rate if they can cut enough from Deegan’s spending plan during budget hearings in August before a final vote in September.
Regardless of which way the council ultimately goes with the rate, your property tax bill could go up if your home value increased. But state law caps the annual increase at 3% or at the rate of inflation, whichever is lower.
Howland says the they mayor’s budget, which increases spending 7.1% over last year, includes $100 million more in revenue than was projected a few months ago, including $20 million more from sales taxes, a one-time $40 million boost in public utility JEA’s city contribution and another $40 million from the increase in residents’ garbage collection fee.
The council vice president also critiqued the mayor’s proposed spending that he characterized as “outside the role of government,” including $230,000 for dental care services, $300,000 for In the World International Church and $500,000 for Museum of Contemporary Art.
“If you give government an extra dollar, then government will spend that extra dollar. The object should always be, then, to not give government a single dollar more than it needs,” Howland said. “This budget gives the government more than it needs. … We’re simply spending too much in this budget.”
Council member Rahman Johnson noted that the last time Council lowered the millage rate, which was in 2022 during former Mayor Lenny Curry’s final budget, city lawmakers didn’t address a deficit in the garbage collection fund.
“If I can help the least of us in our community with dental services that will prevent them from having heart disease and going into the community, and we can do that for $200,000, I think it’s our responsibility to do that,” Johnson said.
Council member Matt Carlucci said lowering the millage rate would be premature.
“If you lower the millage rate this year, you’re digging yourself a bigger hole next year,” he said. “We have a lot of expenses coming, not the least of which is our fire and police personnel are going to be transitioning over to the Florida Retirement System.”
Council member Ju’Coby Pittman was the lone no vote on the bill.
Council needed to set the preliminary millage rate to meet the deadline to notify residents.
The push by key lawmakers on Jacksonville’s Republican-majority council to lower the rate follows pressure from both Gov. Ron DeSantis and the Republican Party of Florida on local governments.
The state GOP launched a paid political campaign May 1 called #ROLLBACKNOW to push county leaders to adopt rollback rates that would reduce or not raise property tax bills.
The rate approved Tuesday, with Ordinance 2025-500, also sets the rollback rate at 10.86140 mills. That’s the rate that would generate the same amount of property tax revenue for the city as last year.
DeSantis has also called for the complete elimination of property taxes for certain demographics of homeowners, including seniors who no longer owe a mortgage on their primary residence.
