A citizen-focused look at Daytona Beach's General Fund, city-operated public safety, and official homestead data relevant to Florida property-tax proposals.
The General Fund is the City's primary operating budget. It pays for many of the everyday services residents rely on, including public safety, parks, streets, planning, administration, and other municipal operations. The figures below show how much recurring revenue the General Fund receives, how much the City plans to spend, and how much of that funding comes from property taxes.
The uploaded source publishes department figures in rounded millions or thousands. They are reproduced as shown; because the underlying exact department table was not included, the rounded lines should not be treated as an exact reconciliation to the General Fund total. Percentages below show each line’s share of the listed department spending.
Patrol, investigations, traffic and event operations, crime prevention, and visitor-area public safety.
Fire suppression, emergency medical response, specialized rescue, emergency management, prevention, and fire safety.
Roads, facilities, maintenance, field operations, and public infrastructure used by residents and visitors.
Daytona Beach operates its own municipal fire-rescue system. That makes its budget structurally different from cities where a county provides fire suppression and EMS.
The Police Department is the largest direct General Fund department shown, at about 34.3% of appropriations.
The Fire Department is a city-operated function, shown at about 13.5% of General Fund appropriations.
This is a proportional illustration, not a legal earmark of property-tax dollars.
The detailed revenue lines below sum exactly to $159,629,167.
The adopted budget shows $58,851,120 in gross property-tax collections. After the required CRA transfer, $53,191,328 remains as net operating property-tax revenue for General Fund services.
This section groups mapped residential parcels into assessed-value ranges reported in the supplied property data. Assessed value is the value used as the starting point for taxable value after Florida assessment limits and exemptions. The ranges help residents see how many properties fall at or below, and above, the $250,000 threshold being discussed.
Each bar shows the share of residential parcels in that assessed-value range. The percentages use the 16,144-parcel assessed-value total as the denominator.
The Florida League of Cities dataset reports 14,232 homestead parcels in Daytona Beach. Unlike the assessed-value distribution above, these figures describe homesteaded parcels and the protection provided by Save Our Homes and existing homestead exemptions.
The published homestead data for Daytona Beach shows that current law already shields a meaningful portion of qualifying home value through Save Our Homes and homestead exemptions. The reported combined protected share is 61.16%.
Only a small share of homestead value is already protected under current law.
The published city-level homestead figures above show the measured effect of Save Our Homes and existing exemptions before any proposed reform.
Understanding the difference between market value and assessed value is important when discussing Florida property taxes. Market value represents the estimated selling price of a property under current market conditions. Assessed value is determined by the County Property Appraiser using Florida law and is the basis for calculating taxable value after assessment limitations, such as Save Our Homes, and applicable exemptions are applied.
Proposed homestead-exemption changes would affect the assessed or taxable value of qualifying homesteaded properties, not the property's market value. Assessed value therefore provides the more useful measure for showing how many residential properties fall above or below the $250,000 threshold.
Picture 4 typical homes in this city. Roughly this many already sit at or under a $250,000 assessed value:
The 70.3% figure above covers every mapped residential parcel citywide, homesteaded or not. The separate homestead dataset reports 14,232 homesteaded parcels in Daytona Beach with a median assessed value of $160,618. Because the two sources cover different parcel populations, this page does not present an exact homestead-only count by value tier.
A large share of parcels falling below the threshold does not translate dollar-for-dollar into the same share of city property-tax revenue disappearing. Revenue effects depend on taxable value, exemption eligibility, final legal language, phase-in rules, and replacement funding—not parcel count alone. Current-law protections already shield about 61.2% of the typical homesteaded property value shown in the separate homestead dataset.
Property-tax revenue is deposited into the General Fund along with other unrestricted revenue. Together, those resources support many core municipal services. Other operations are financed through utility rates, assessments, grants, impact fees, debt proceeds, or other dedicated funds and generally cannot be treated as interchangeable General Fund money.
A responsible year-over-year comparison must use the same fund definition and the same adopted-budget basis in both years. The figures already verified on this page establish the FY2026 operating picture, but they do not always provide a comparable citywide FY2025 total.
Spending can be reduced, but the practical question is which services, positions, contracts, projects, or maintenance cycles would change. This page does not label spending as necessary or wasteful without a separate operational or performance review.
The City budgets $58,851,120 in gross property-tax collections. A required $5,659,792 transfer goes to the Community Redevelopment Agency, leaving $53,191,328 as net operating property-tax revenue for General Fund services. The headline card uses the net operating amount, while the revenue chart shows both pieces so the full budget total still reconciles.
No. The cited report expresses a share of aggregate homestead value, not a parcel count.
No. Future choices would depend on final law, state action, replacement revenue, reserves, fees, spending priorities, and future budget decisions.
The two official property-value datasets do not, by themselves, support a neutral citywide loss calculation without additional assumptions. The project therefore avoids presenting a speculative number as a fact.
Official adopted budget book ↗
Used for median assessed value, Save Our Homes differential, exemption figures, percentage not taxed, and homestead parcel count.
Used for aggregate homestead value below and above the proposed threshold.
Revenue lines were summed and reconciled. Gross property taxes are split between net operating property-tax revenue and the required CRA transfer so the chart still reconciles to total General Fund resources. Department amounts are rounded as displayed in the supplied page.
