Property values continue decline

The governments of Sarasota County and its municipalities are trying to determine just how the estimated drops in 2010 property values are going to affect their budgets.

For the third year in a row, the properties in the city of Sarasota saw their taxable values drop between 10% and 11%.

Taxable values in the city in 2010 are estimated at $7.2 billion, down from $8.1 billion in 2009 — a drop of 10.78%. From 2008 to 2009, the values fell 11.31%, and from 2007 to 2008 they dipped 10.8%.

Chris Lyons, the city’s finance director, said the loss will result in more than $5 million that has to be cut from next year’s budget.

The loss of taxable value in 2010 was pretty even across all municipalities and special taxing districts (see box, page 2).

Sarasota County fell 9.77%, as did the city of Venice. The Sarasota County School Board was down 9.44%. The town of Longboat Key dropped 9.45%. But the city of North Port again took the brunt of the economic downturn. Its taxable values plummeted 17.1%. Last year was even worse for North Port, with a decline of 22.34%.

Several specialty taxing districts also saw values decline in the 10% to 11% range, including the Southgate Lighting District, Siesta Key Lighting District, Siesta Key Village PID and North Casey Key PID.

One taxing district that fared better than the others was the Golden Gate Point Streetscape District, which dipped 6.8%, from $196 million in 2009 to $184 million this year.

Contact Robin Roy at [email protected]