By Reggie Connell, Managing Editor
In Summary:
Apopka continues to confront understaffed departments, deferred projects, and recurring bare-bones budgets. Elected officials have sought to maintain a low millage rate while resisting the service and program cuts required to balance spending at that level. Without staged, modest revenue increases and a credible multiyear financial plan, the city risks falling further behind as its unmet needs become more urgent and expensive.
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The nameplate in the center seat of the Apopka City Commission has changed three times in the past 12 years, but some of the city’s budget challenges seem to remain the same.
Former Mayor Joe Kilsheimer discussed bare-bones budgets as far back as 2016. From 2018 through 2026, former Mayor Bryan Nelson highlighted Apopka’s low millage rate, high reserves, and maintained that city employees could accomplish more with fewer resources.
Now Mayor Nick Nesta, confronting many of the same financial pressures, has also described his proposed budget as bare-bones.
Each mayor inherited different circumstances and approached them differently. Still, the result has a familiar outline: a low millage rate, understaffed departments, deferred needs, spending cuts and substantial reserves.
Everyone wants lower taxes. Everyone also wants community celebrations, nonprofit grants, well-paid police officers and firefighters, improved roads, reliable utilities, new fire stations, quality parks and responsive city services.
The difficulty begins, however, when the millage rate discussion begins.
Apopka’s latest budget debate exposed a contradiction that has shaped City Hall’s financial decisions for years: Elected officials want credit for holding down the millage rate and keeping reserves high, but they do not always want responsibility for the cuts and staff shortages those policies create.
That contradiction was particularly evident in Commissioner Nadia Anderson’s positions.
City staff began this budget process by recommending a one-mill increase to address Apopka’s accumulating needs. By the first formal workshop, the proposed ceiling had fallen to three-quarters of a mill, with a goal of reducing the final increase to half a mill.
Anderson balked at all of them.
Ultimately, she voted against even an increase of approximately one-quarter mill. The proposed 4.6761-mill rate would essentially return Apopka to where it stood two years ago—before the City Council inexplicably cut the rate by a quarter mill in 2025, during an election season.
But when Nesta presented a bare-bones budget based on that lower rate, Anderson objected to some of its most visible consequences.
She opposed eliminating the $100,000 nonprofit grant program and pushed to restore funding for community traditions, including Halloween in the Park, the Holiday Tree Lighting, the Martin Luther King Jr. Parade, Hispanic Heritage Celebration, Juneteenth, the Fourth of July celebration, Memorial Day and Veterans Day ceremonies.
“These events are not extras; they are the heartbeat of our community,” Anderson wrote on her commissioner Facebook page.
That is a compelling argument for funding them, but it does not explain how Apopka can pay for them while rejecting the revenue needed to support the city’s broader responsibilities.
A commissioner may reasonably oppose a tax increase and defend community programs. Doing both requires a sustainable budget showing what should be cut, how much those cuts would save, and whether the remaining revenue can support city operations beyond one year.
Bare bones means making choices
Nesta said commissioners and residents asked him to remove the “fluff.” He responded by eliminating funding for community events and nonprofit grants, leaving commissioners to decide what to restore and where the money should come from.
That was an appropriate exercise. Calls to “cut spending” remain comfortably abstract until residents see what smaller government actually looks like.
Cutting Christmas, Halloween events or grants supporting seniors, children, homeless residents, non-profits and families in need is considerably harder than calling for fiscal restraint from the dais.
But those programs are relatively small, visible pieces of a much larger budget. Eliminating all of them would not solve Apopka’s structural challenges involving employee compensation, public safety, aging equipment, infrastructure and deferred capital projects.
They are not why Apopka faces millions of dollars in unmet needs.
The pressure comes primarily from operating a growing city—staffing departments, paying negotiated wages and benefits, maintaining equipment and delivering essential services.
Former City Administrator Jacob Smith warned commissioners in 2024 that expenses had caught up with revenue and “every single” department was inadequately funded.
Nothing in the latest debate suggests that imbalance has disappeared.
Anderson did more than demand that programs be restored. She proposed postponing $75,000 in renovations to City Hall’s second floor and redirecting some of the $275,000 budgeted for office furniture.
After touring the floor, she said she found no immediate safety hazard that could not wait until the next budget cycle.
Her proposal deserves consideration. If the furniture is unnecessary, reduce or delay it. If renovations can wait without compromising safety, productivity or the building’s condition, postpone them. Government should justify spending on its offices as carefully as it scrutinizes spending on the public.
Nesta said the improvements have already been delayed and will cost more. Commissioners should settle that disagreement with evidence: a detailed scope of work, a condition assessment, and competitive cost estimates.
But the phrase “wait until the next budget cycle” also describes Apopka’s larger problem.
The fire station can wait. The vehicles can wait. The position can remain vacant. The building renovation can wait. The infrastructure project can wait.
Then another budget arrives, and those needs remain—only older, more urgent, and usually more expensive.
Even if Anderson is entirely correct about the City Hall expenses, redirecting that money would merely rearrange this year’s spending. It would not provide recurring revenue for future staffing, labor agreements, equipment, utilities, or fire stations.
Deferring one office project may be reasonable. Continually deferring the city’s needs is not a financial strategy.
Back to where Apopka started
The proposed rate is approximately 0.24 mills above the rollback rate and is expected to generate about $2.1 million in additional revenue. Rising property values would provide another $4.68 million.
For every $100,000 of taxable value, the proposed rate represents approximately $25 more than the current rate. That could mean about $100 for a home with $400,000 in taxable value. For residents already struggling with increased insurance, food, utilities, and housing costs, City Hall should not dismiss that amount as insignificant.
But commissioners must also explain what residents receive—or risk losing—in return.
The proposed increase essentially restores last year's quarter-mill cut. In 2024, Smith said a quarter-mill increase would not allow Apopka to catch up. It would only keep the city where it was.
The council responded by raising the rate to 4.6876 mills. Anderson, Nesta, and Commissioner Diane Velazquez supported it.
Then, in 2025, the council reduced the rate to 4.4376 mills, eliminating the same quarter mill Smith said was necessary merely to prevent Apopka from falling further behind.
The reduction may have been politically attractive during an election season. Financially, it is difficult to explain. Now, after another year of inflation, vacancies and deferred needs, Apopka is landing on a rate of 4.6761 mills—still slightly below where it stood two years ago.
This is not an aggressive expansion of government. It is not even catching up. It is returning almost to the starting line after another year of losses.
There are no painless budgets
A gradual approach could help Apopka close its structural gap without placing the entire burden on taxpayers in one year. Modest increases tied to a public multiyear plan would show residents where their money is going and allow them to hold commissioners accountable. Instead, Apopka repeatedly postpones action and returns the next summer facing the same problems at higher prices.
Vacancies become harder to fill. Equipment becomes more expensive. Infrastructure deteriorates. Employees carry heavier workloads, increasing burnout and turnover. Improvements eventually become emergencies.
That is the hidden price of holding the millage rate artificially low. Refusing an increase does not eliminate the cost. It transfers it to the next budget, the next commission, and the next group of taxpayers.
Anderson is right that nonprofits perform valuable work. She is right that community traditions help define Apopka. She may also be right that some furniture and renovations can wait.
But city employees are people, too. So are residents waiting for permits, police responses, park repairs, and utility improvements. So are firefighters working from inadequate facilities and taxpayers who will eventually pay more because maintenance was postponed.
Nesta’s bare-bones proposal forced commissioners to confront the practical meaning of the revenue level they demanded. That does not mean every cut was wise. It means anyone seeking to reverse those cuts must identify an honest funding source.
Eventually, the choices are unavoidable: Raise recurring revenue, reduce recurring services, or postpone costs until they become larger emergencies.
There is no vote available for “all of the above at no additional cost.”
Commissioners who oppose a millage increase must say exactly what they are willing to cut. Commissioners who oppose the cuts must acknowledge what restoring them will cost.
Apopka has spent too many budget cycles pushing today’s needs into tomorrow. Without staged, modest increases and a credible multiyear plan, the city will keep falling behind as essential needs and staff shortages grow more severe and expensive.
Anything less is not responsible budgeting. It is the perilous politics of wanting to have it both ways.
Key Points:
- Apopka’s recurring budget challenges have continued through three mayoral administrations.
- City staff initially recommended a one-mill increase, but the proposed rate ultimately rose by less than a quarter mill.
- Anderson opposed the millage increases and sought to restore nonprofit grants and community events.
- The proposed 4.6761-mill rate remains slightly below the rate Apopka adopted two years ago.
- Delaying staffing, equipment, and infrastructure needs generally makes them more urgent and expensive.
FEATURE PHOTO BY ISABEL LECOMPTE (@ISASBEL.LECOMPTE), INTERNING PHOTOGRAPHER FOR THE APOPKA VOICE.
