Fort Myers votes August 3 on lifting its property tax cap to 7.3112 mills, which is exactly the ceiling a two-thirds vote allows

The Fort Myers City Council will vote on August 3 on raising the cap on the city's property tax rate for the first time in ten years, according to reporting by Evan Williams at Gulfshore Business.

The proposal on the table would move the cap from 6.5000 mills to 7.3112 mills for the fiscal year that begins October 1. Williams reported that councillors will also vote that night on raising the cap on the residential fire assessment fee by 30 percent, from 218 dollars to 283 dollars and 40 cents, and on issuing 40 million dollars in bonds for capital projects.

City Manager Marty Lawing attributed the pressure in part to flat population growth, with the city expected to stay at about 102,000 residents, Gulfshore Business reported. Financial Services Director Christine Tenney told the July 28 workshop that the ad valorem tax base grew 0.45 percent this year to about 14 billion dollars, and Williams reported her describing that as much lower than she expected. The same reporting put the city's reserves at 44.4 million dollars, separate from an emergency contingency fund, and set out a capital list that includes a 147.2 million dollar police headquarters, a fire station, road and utility work, and Midtown spending, against 17.1 million dollars of debt service in the coming year. City staff put the yield of the higher rate at an additional 10.4 million dollars. Those figures are Gulfshore's reporting and are credited to Gulfshore.

What this brief adds is the check on the number itself, because 7.3112 is a strange figure until it is read against the statute.

Section 200.065(5)(a) of the Florida Statutes was read directly for this brief. It sets a maximum millage rate a county, municipality or independent district may adopt by simple majority, and then allows two ways past it. A rate of not more than 110 percent of that maximum may be adopted by a two-thirds vote of the membership of the governing body. A rate above 110 percent requires a unanimous vote of the membership, or a three-fourths vote where the body has nine or more members, or approval by referendum.

Multiply the 6.6465 figure Gulfshore reported as the majority-vote threshold by 1.10 and the result is 7.31115, which is 7.3112 at the four decimal places the state's millage forms use. The cap the council will vote on is therefore the exact statutory ceiling for a two-thirds vote and not an amount the city arrived at by preference. Williams reported the vote thresholds in the same terms, describing a simple majority up to 6.6465 mills, a two-thirds vote between 6.6465 and 7.3112, and unanimity above that.

One distinction is worth stating precisely rather than blurring. The rolled-back rate defined in section 200.065(1) and the maximum millage rate defined in section 200.065(5) are separate calculations, the second resting on the prior year's maximum millage adjusted for the change in per capita Florida personal income. The exact 1.10 ratio between 6.6465 and 7.3112 is what identifies 6.6465 as the figure governing the vote threshold here. This publication was not able to open the city's own certification and maximum millage forms to confirm which line each number sits on.

That last point is a limit on this brief and is stated plainly. The City of Fort Myers website at fortmyers.gov refused connections throughout the reporting of this item, so the August 3 agenda, the July 28 workshop presentation and the city's own budget documents could not be retrieved. The Legistar portal at cityftmyers.legistar.com returns an error rather than a calendar. The Lee County Property Appraiser has not yet posted a 2026 DR-420 certification, which is the document that would carry the certified taxable value for the city and the derived rates. Every city figure above therefore rests on Gulfshore Business rather than on a document opened here.

What could be opened here is the county roll underneath all of it. The Lee County Property Appraiser's preliminary 2026 At-A-Glance, dated as of July 1, 2026, puts total taxable value for real and tangible personal property across Lee County at 156,343,845,669 dollars, against total just value of 217,727,315,012 dollars, spread over 571,234 real property parcels. The roughly 14 billion dollar city base described at the workshop is a little under a tenth of that county figure.

Gulfshore Business also reported that the November ballot measure raising the non-school homestead exemption to 150,000 dollars in 2027 and 250,000 dollars in 2028, which requires 60 percent approval, is among the pressures councillors discussed, since it would cut the revenue base that the millage rate is applied to.

The final rate and the budget are adopted at public hearings in September, before the fiscal year begins on October 1. Councillors can lower the rate then. They cannot raise it.

The original reporting is at gulfshorebusiness.com (subscription). Section 200.065 of the Florida Statutes is here, and the ten mill municipal ceiling is in Article VII, section 9(b) of the Florida Constitution.