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 the City's main operating budget. The figures below show recurring General Fund revenue, the FY2026 adopted spending plan, property-tax revenue, and the share of recurring General Fund revenue provided by property taxes.
The uploaded city page reports rounded department totals. Because the figures are rounded, they sum to about $40.87 million rather than exactly matching the $40.79 million adopted total.
Residents do not experience a budget as accounting lines. They experience it as services: public safety, parks, maintenance, infrastructure, technology, planning, and city operations.
Patrol, investigations, traffic enforcement, public-safety response, and law-enforcement operations.
Fire suppression, emergency medical response, prevention, and related public-safety operations.
Roads, facilities, infrastructure maintenance, fleet support, and city operational services.
Parks, recreation, community programs, public spaces, events, and quality-of-life services.
City services and operating functions supported through the General Fund.
City services and operating functions supported through the General Fund.
Technology systems, communications, cybersecurity, and digital service support.
City services and operating functions supported through the General Fund.
Planning, development review, permitting, inspections, zoning, and community growth management.
City management, finance, legal, human resources, purchasing, records, and citywide support.
Planning, development review, permitting, inspections, zoning, and community growth management.
City services and operating functions supported through the General Fund.
Fire suppression, emergency medical response, prevention, and related public-safety operations.
The FY2026 General Fund includes approximately $15.4 million for Police and $8,769,059 for the City of Leesburg Fire Department.
Patrol, investigations, traffic enforcement, records, code enforcement, and community services.
Fire suppression, EMS, rescue, inspections, emergency management, and airport fire rescue.
$4,085,069 in Fire Assessment Fee revenue plus $253,000 in ALS revenue from Lake Sumter EMS.
Property taxes are pooled with other General Fund revenues. The comparison below reflects approximate spending shares, not legal earmarks.
The detailed revenue categories below reconcile exactly to the reported $40,790,963 General Fund total.
The adopted budget shows $10,685,203 from Property Taxes, the largest revenue source shown.
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 17,831-parcel assessed-value total as the denominator.
The Florida League of Cities analysis reports averages for Leesburg homestead parcels. These figures describe existing exemptions and Save Our Homes effects; they are not a city revenue-loss estimate. 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 Leesburg 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 50.77%.
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 80.9% figure above covers every mapped residential parcel citywide, homesteaded or not. An exact homestead-only breakdown by assessed-value tier is not available in the source data used for this page, so no exact qualifying-home count is presented.
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 50.8% of the typical homesteaded property value shown in the separate homestead dataset.
Property taxes are a major General Fund revenue source, but they are not the only source supporting Leesburg'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.
Leesburg operates its own Fire Department. The FY2026 General Fund reports $8,769,059 for Fire, with Fire Assessment Fee and ALS revenues shown separately.
The uploaded city page reports department values in rounded thousands or millions. Those rounded values total approximately $40.87 million, while the adopted General Fund total is $40,790,963.
No. The tier file covers a broader residential parcel population. The separate FLC homestead analysis reports 6,959 homestead parcels.
No. It is the current General Fund property-tax revenue line. A future impact depends on the final policy design and any replacement funding.
Reserves can help with emergencies or transitions, but they are not a permanent replacement for an ongoing revenue source.
