- March 16, 2026
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In a poll taken of the approximately 20 residents who attended Manatee County’s Budget 101 session at Lakewood Ranch Town Hall March 11, 92% said they would prefer to keep paying their current taxes rather than cutting services to save money.
The scenario presented by Claudia Campos, Manatee County’s interim Chief Financial Officer, saved residents $15.08 a year, but the service cuts included an elimination of pool lifeguards and road maintenance, a reduction of traffic operations (signal timing) and increased wait times on the 311 information phone service.
“For some people, $15 is a lot of money, and I’m not trying to dismiss that,” Lakewood Ranch’s Tauna Durand said. “But I feel very fortunate that the $15 wouldn’t affect me. I’d rather keep the services.”
The dollar amount of all those services totaled over $5.5 million, which equates to a .07 millage reduction. Each mill represents $1 for every $1,000 of taxable property value.
Campos covered millage, property taxes and what commissioners can and cannot control during the one-hour session aimed at educating the public on the process of creating Manatee County's gross budget of more than $3.5 billion.
County staff are also collecting data during the workshops to help determine which services matter most to residents.
Millage dollars pay for roads, bridges, parks, preserves and public safety.
If given the choice to save one service, 42% of residents at Town Hall would save road maintenance but not one person elected to save park and preserve maintenance.
When residents were asked to save five services, 80% ranked road maintenance and traffic operations at the top of the list. And during the Q&A portion of the workshop, Lorraine Road became a topic of discussion.
Lakewood Ranch’s Brian Montanari called the section of Lorraine Road between State Road 64 and State Road 70 “a big bone of contention for a lot of people in the area” and asked why widening it was pushed off to 2031 when additional residential developments and a new high school were approved in its vicinity.
County Commissioner George Kruse noted that the average cost to construct one lane mile (typically 12 feet wide) is $8.5 million. Given the cost to acquire right-of-way on Lorraine Road, Manatee County estimates it will cost $400 million to widen that corridor.
“I think the money is better spent fixing light timing, intersections and slip lanes for turns,” Kruse said. “$400 million in a budget is a tough pill to swallow.”
Residents were also asked what they learned from attending Budget 101, and the two main responses could be summarized as follows: The budget process is complicated, and commissioners have a lot less control over the budget than most residents realize.
Commissioners have discretion over 7 cents of every tax dollar because 50 cents goes to the school board, 29 cents goes to the Manatee County Sheriff's Office, 4 cents goes to constitutional officers (the clerk, property appraiser, tax collector and supervisor of elections), 3 cents goes to other taxing authorities (mosquito control, fire and water management districts), 3 cents goes to voter approved millages (children services and environmental lands) and 3 cents goes to mandated items (judicial programs and public safety).
The remaining 7 cents are divided among parks, libraries and transportation, which includes building roads but also engineering, maintaining and signalizing those roads.
Montanari doesn't want to give up any of those services. On the contrary, he said libraries could use more funding to expand into Myakka City and Parrish.
Campos also laid out what commissioners can and cannot control — they can approve or deny the countywide budget and millage, they can control department service levels, which include how many positions are funded and what programs and services are expanded or eliminated, they can approve or deny projects within the capital improvement plan and they can make debt service decisions.
“Even though the board controls the total approved budget, they do not approve day-to-day spending,” Campos said. “They don’t approve and sign every single invoice or expense that happens on a day-to-day basis within every single department. This is left to the county administrator and department directors.”
