By Rod Olsen
Editor's Note: Rod Olsen is a former HOA President of Rock Springs Ridge and an Apopka resident who often contributes his opinions at the Apopka City Council meetings during the public comments section and in frequent op/eds to The Apopka Voice.
Apopka’s 2025-2026 budget falls somewhere between A WING AND A PRAYER and SWAG (Sophisticated Wild-Ass Guess).
Related: A budget isn't a spreadsheet, it's a mirror.
The three-day Budget Workshops were disappointing and extremely frustrating. Comments regarding this budget process do not reflect the hard work, dedication, and services provided by our Staff and Department Heads. This reflects a failure in our City leadership.
The 2025-2026 budget is flawed, and the process should begin sooner. Our Commissioners received their budget books on the eve of the Budget Workshops and updates every day. Our Commissioners and Taxpayers received filtered, incomplete information. The lack of complete and timely data denied everyone the opportunity to effectively review, analyze, research, and ask informed questions to make informed decisions. The 2025-2026 Budget Workshops were like a sprint, with limited facts, ever-changing data, and a lack of accountability.
Limited data was provided to substantiate line-item entries, and the data kept changing. Successful budgeting requires timely, accurate, side-by-side 5-year historical data, current year-to-date results, current trends, anticipated trends, and anticipated upcoming needs at your fingertips. Without this critical data laid together side-by-side and the opportunity to see and analyze trends, one cannot make informed decisions.
Apopka has and is operating with an oar out of the water. On May 14, 2025, the City reported 88 Staff vacancies. On July 7, 2025, the Budget Workshop reported 62 Staff vacancies. Apopka has and is operating short-staffed by 12 to 18 percent! It is unsurprising that some work remains incomplete, delayed, or inaccurate. This highlights concerns with communication, pay, benefits, job satisfaction, and leadership, resulting in overworked, unmotivated Staff.
Preparing an accurate budget is a marathon. Preparation starts months before the event. Training, analysis, and hard work are conducted throughout the process. As the event time comes closer, the Staff becomes more focused, and data is synthesized, analyzed, refined, redefined, and fine-tuned in preparation for the event. Budgets must be based upon historical data, trends, and future projections. Budgeting is not a sprint with limited and ever-changing information and data. Successful budgets are based upon quantifiable facts.
You need to look no further than the street and sidewalk budget to see my concerns with this budget. Currently, the budget for streets and sidewalks presented for fiscal year 2025-2026 is $8,373,496.
Rock Springs Ridge/Welch $1M, Golden Gem $5M, Sandpiper/Park $1.4M, and Lust/Binion $500K are current budgeted road projects listed. This totals $7.9M. When you add $300K for sidewalks, the total $ is $8.2M of the proposed $8,373,496 budget, leaving us with $173,496 for all other street and sidewalk repairs and improvements. Florida’s average street and sidewalk cost is $2M-$3M/mile for paving a new 2-lane road, $4-$10M/mile for paving a new 4-lane road $127K-$380K/mile for resurfacing a single lane of road, $750K/mile for paving a sidewalk and $10/square foot for resurfacing a sidewalk.
If you took the entire $7.9M for streets and applied it to just 2-lane, it equates to 3.16miles, 4-lane to 1.13 miles, and 31.1 miles just for 1-lane resurfacing! If you took the entire $300K just for new sidewalks, it equates to 0.4 miles and 1.4 miles just for resurfacing sidewalks. With Apopka’s 36 square miles, this does not even scratch the surface of our street and sidewalk needs.
Golden Gem Pond repair estimates have ranged from $4M to $30M. There is a $12.5M budget for a proposed new Golden Gem pump station, not for required repairs. For every identified need for this budget year, another need was put off to future budget years. We must stop kicking the can down the road.
When I inquired, every department head at the 2025-2026 Budget Workshops indicated that the budget they presented represented everything they needed in People, supplies, materials, and equipment to meet the needs of our Citizens. However, the community needs and numbers do not appear to align with this.
In response to my March record request, the City, in mid-May, provided me with the preventative maintenance schedule showing that only a handful of the over 1,000 pieces of equipment listed showed preventative maintenance completed. With this information in hand, I added three questions for the Department Heads this year:
- Is all your department’s equipment on a preventative maintenance schedule?
- Is the preventative maintenance completed and documented?
- Do you personally spot-check compliance?
They all answered affirmatively.
The Department Head's affirmation is diametrically opposite to the information the City provided me with. Apopka’s previous Public Works Director indicated that 30% of the City’s assets are past their normal life span and could not confirm if all the water and sewer system equipment was being maintained promptly. Every piece of equipment should be on a preventative maintenance schedule, timely and properly maintained within industry standards. Given that 30% of our equipment is past its normal lifespan and still operating, I surmise that preventive maintenance is taking place, hopefully in accordance with standards. The documentation provided to me does not support this. Coming from a healthcare background, if it is not documented, it did not happen.
We have thousands of new homes, town homes, and apartments under construction and more in the pipeline. We have flooding, streets, sidewalks, water, sewer, reclaimed water, and overcapacity school problems, yet our Mayor and Commissioners continue to rubber stamp new development.
During Tuesday’s Budget Workshop, Commissioner Smith described one of the new developments, the lack of sidewalks, as “an accident waiting to happen” when children walk to school along the road. He rightly insisted that this sidewalk be in the budget. I do not recall anyone on the Dias raising concern about this or other proposed developments at the time of review and their approval. The City continues to fail to carefully plan, budget, and take a PROACTIVE approach to governing.
The developer should be required to complete all streets, sidewalks, water infrastructure, and sewer systems to connect their development prior to home occupancy. This is the purpose of the development fees. This should not fall on our current Taxpayers. This administration continues in a REACTIVE as opposed to PROACTIVE approach to planning and running our City.
The City Council MUST IMMEDIATELY place a temporary HOLD on all new development until Apopka has the infrastructure and staff to manage it.
Further, Taxpayers must demand a detailed analysis to determine the accuracy of every budget line item to ensure the City has the resources to meet our citizens' needs and the budget and subsequent mileage rate to support it.
Without this analysis and requisite amendments, please mark 10/8/2025 on your calendar. This will be the first meeting of the new fiscal year, and the first of twenty-four meetings City Council will be making budget adjustments because of their failure to budget properly.
We deserve better.
