{"id":25377,"date":"2022-09-23T16:14:42","date_gmt":"2022-09-23T20:14:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/?p=25377"},"modified":"2022-09-23T16:14:50","modified_gmt":"2022-09-23T20:14:50","slug":"lakeland-commissioners-adopt-a-730-million-budget-with-the-message-to-improve-police-and-fire-departments","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/2022\/09\/23\/lakeland-commissioners-adopt-a-730-million-budget-with-the-message-to-improve-police-and-fire-departments\/","title":{"rendered":"Lakeland Commissioners adopt a $730 million budget with the message to improve police and fire departments"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<figure class=\"alignright size-full\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"310\" height=\"163\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 310px) 100vw, 310px\" src=\"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/01\/Lakeland-Swan.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-19171\" srcset=\"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/01\/Lakeland-Swan.png 310w, https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/01\/Lakeland-Swan-300x158.png 300w\" \/><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">City commissioners have adopted a $730 million budget that arranges\u00a0public safety first while holding\u00a0the city&#8217;s property tax rate flat. Residents, however, will likely\u00a0may see a slight increase in their property taxes.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The city commission voted unanimously to approve a tax rate of $5.43 per $1,000 of assessed property value for the fiscal year 2023, which starts Oct. 1.\u00a0This is the same tax rate as the current year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The new budget places importance on improving police and fire as it contains more than $9.2 million in improvements.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">It will fund the hiring of 13\u00a0officers for the Lakeland Police Department.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The Lakeland Fire Department will be provided with funding for 12 additional positions to staff a new station. The budget contains\u00a0funds\u00a0designated\u00a0for the city to purchase property to serve as a site of future fire station 8\u00a0to be located in North Lakeland.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Commissioner Walker has suggested thought in creating a police substation within the firehouse could improve response times and provide relief to LPD officers.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The average Lakeland homeowner with property assessed property value of $123,500, without considering&nbsp;any exemptions, would pay about $670 in property taxes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Despite the city holding the line on taxes, many property owners will wind up paying slightly more in\u00a0taxes next year. The average assessed value of a Lakeland home rose from $107,000 to $123,500 over the last year, which\u00a0amounts to a\u00a0difference of about $80.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>City commissioners have adopted a $730 million budget that arranges\u00a0public safety first while holding\u00a0the city&#8217;s property tax rate flat. Residents, however, will likely\u00a0may see a slight increase in their property&hellip; <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":23467,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"wpai_generated_summary":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"{title}\n\n{excerpt}\n\n{url}","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"dois","default_image_id":71799,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_wpas_customize_per_network":false},"categories":[12,14],"tags":[3476],"class_list":["post-25377","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local","category-news","tag-lakeland-commissioners-adopt-a-730-million-budget"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25377","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25377"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25377\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23467"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25377"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25377"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25377"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}