A citizen-focused look at the City’s FY2025–26 General Fund, the services it supports, and how property taxes fit into the larger revenue picture.
The General Fund is Lake Mary's main operating budget. The figures below show current General Fund revenue, the FY2026 adopted spending plan, property-tax revenue, and the share of General Fund revenue provided by property taxes.
These are the major operating categories in Lake Mary's adopted FY2026 General Fund. The chart excludes the $800,000 transfer to the Capital Projects Fund so residents can see department spending separately.
Residents experience the budget through services: police and fire response, parks, roads, permitting, technology, finance, and daily city operations.
Patrol, investigations, traffic enforcement, school resource officers, records, evidence, and code enforcement.
Fire suppression, emergency medical response, rescue transport, prevention, inspections, and community risk reduction.
Parks, recreation programs, community facilities, events, senior services, tennis, and facility maintenance.
City management, clerk, legal services, community development, information systems, and general administration.
Permitting, plan review, inspections, and building-code enforcement.
Streets, sidewalks, and public-works administration.
Accounting, budgeting, purchasing, payroll, and financial reporting.
Lake Mary directly operates and budgets both Police and Fire services in its General Fund.
The adopted General Fund includes $9,518,122 for Police Operations and Police Support Services.
The adopted General Fund includes $8,687,929 for Fire Emergency Operations and Community Risk Reduction. Lake Mary operates two fire stations and provides fire, EMS, rescue, and transport services.
Property taxes are pooled with other General Fund revenues. This comparison shows spending scale and is not a legal earmark of each property-tax dollar.
Lake Mary's General Fund combines property taxes with franchise and utility taxes, service charges, state-shared revenue, permits, transfers, and other sources.
Property taxes are the largest single General Fund revenue source at $13,056,336, but they account for 43.6% rather than the entire operating budget.
The parcel-tier file contains 10,288 mapped residential parcels. Assessed value is the more useful measure for discussing taxable value and homestead exemptions.
The Florida League of Cities analysis reports averages for 4,265 Lake Mary homestead parcels. These figures describe current exemptions and Save Our Homes effects, not a city revenue-loss projection.
The published Lake Mary data shows an average of $210,689 in combined value protected by Save Our Homes and the first and second homestead exemptions. The combined average protected share is 50.11%.
Market value is an estimate of selling price. Assessed value is the value used before exemptions to calculate taxable value and is the more relevant measure for this comparison.
The parcel-tier file does not identify how many parcels in each value tier are homesteaded. The Florida League of Cities dataset separately reports 4,265 homestead parcels and a median assessed value of $288,703. Therefore, this page does not claim an exact homestead-only percentage below $250,000.
Property taxes are a major General Fund revenue source, but they are not the only source supporting Lake Mary's day-to-day services. Other taxes, state-shared revenue, fees, charges, transfers, and other legally available resources also contribute.
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.
Lake Mary operates its own Fire Department. The FY2026 General Fund includes $8,687,929 for Fire Emergency Operations and Community Risk Reduction.
The adopted budget uses approximately $1.75 million of existing fund balance. That is prior-year money, not new current-year revenue.
No. It explains the current adopted budget and property-value data.
The tier file covers 10,288 mapped residential parcels, while the FLC homestead dataset reports 4,265 homestead parcels.
City budget figures were taken from Lake Mary's FY2026 adopted budget. Property-value and homestead figures came from the project datasets listed below.
