Collier Commission keeps millage rate, funds $2.2B budget

In a 3-2 vote, the Collier County Commission decided to keep the current millage rate for fiscal 2026, effectively raising tax collections by up to 3% as property values continue to climb.

The decision allows the county to fully fund its $2.2 billion budget for the fiscal year starting Oct. 1, including long-delayed maintenance needs that predate the past two years of rolled-back rates.

The resolution that passed, proposed by Commissioner William McDaniel Jr., dictates that some $25 million of this increased income will become the foundation of a fund to replace aging infrastructure. The backlog of repairs is so large that County Manager Amy Patterson declined to estimate for Commissioner Burt Saunders just how many hundreds of millions of dollars in maintenance remain unfinished.

“We have over 5 million square feet of buildings that are aging. [The Collier County Government Center] building alone is almost 50 years old, and is at the end of its useful life,” Patterson said. She cited the David Lawrence Center and the county forensics building as examples, estimating that rebuilding each would cost about $75 million.

“I’m not saying they all need to be replaced. But we’re talking about air conditioning, roofs,” she added. Inside space needs also are a consideration. Stormwater treatment needs are another priority, one that would cost $300 million altogether.

For the past two years, commissioners have rolled back property tax revenue to match the prior year’s collections. But those rollbacks come at a cost to the county, Saunders told residents who urged keeping taxes flat.

Doing that conflicts with what the same residents want for their county, he said.

“We have a wonderful median beautification program. It’s not necessary. We don’t have to do that. We have probably some of the best parks in the country. We don’t have to have that. We could let the maintenance slide and have average parks,” he said. “We maintain our beaches. We have crews out there every day. We don't have to do all that. But this is where we live. This is our quality of life.”

Commissioner Rick LoCastro pointed out that homeowners’ complaints about rising costs were affecting costs at their county level, too. And he observed that people who live here want their home values to rise for the day when they eventually sell them. But they don’t want to pay the taxes on that more valuable home: “You can’t have it both ways,” he said.

Commissioner Dan Kowal proposed a midpoint, a capped increase in income that would be somewhere between a rollback and keeping the millage rate from last year, a status called millage neutral. But it didn’t fly with other commissioners.

Commissioner Chris Hall was the commissioner most set against a millage-neutral taxation. Despite pleas from its leaders and other environmentalists during the public comment period, he proposed using $25 million from the Conservation Collier budget rather than fully funding it next year. That would allow them to keep a rolled back property tax base, he said. The county has done that once before, earmarking $29 million from it “and Conservation Collier never missed a lick,” he said.

“The only way I knew we could fully fund our budget without raising taxes was to be creative with some of our accounts,” Hall said, insisting, “I’m not the Conservation Collier boogeyman. I'm not cutting the program. I’m not killing the program. If we go a year and don’t fund it fully, like you’re saying, the developers are not going to come in and take it over.”

That didn’t sit well with either Saunders or LoCastro. Both pointed out that voters have twice approved taxing themselves for Conservation Collier, which accumulates funds for property purchase to maintain habitats for wildlife and to protect Collier County’s unique ecosystem from urban sprawl.

“I don't think we're sitting up here as a monarchy. … We aren't kings who override what happens when our citizens vote for something,” LoCastro said.

Both he and McDaniel pointed out that the county consultants, Resource X, were preparing a proposal for next year with some cost-cutting moves. LoCastro said he would prefer to hear those first “before I make any major muscle movement” such as another millage rollback.

For a pair of other interest groups at the 2 ½-hour meeting, the passage of the budget is good news. The Collier County arts organizations grants recommended by the county’s Tourism Development Council are intact. Further, the two libraries that had been rumored to be on the chopping block, Vanderbilt and East Naples, were spared, at least for the coming year.