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 budget’s rounded department figures total approximately $739.6 million. Small differences from the exact adopted total reflect rounding in the source presentation.
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.
City services and operating functions supported through the General Fund.
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.
City services and operating functions supported through the General Fund.
Planning, development review, permitting, inspections, zoning, and community growth management.
Roads, facilities, infrastructure maintenance, fleet support, and city operational services.
City services and operating functions supported through the General Fund.
Planning, development review, permitting, inspections, zoning, and community growth management.
Police and fire are the two largest General Fund departments and together represent approximately 54.9% of General Fund spending.
Patrol, investigations, emergency response, airport and school coverage, staffing, equipment and support.
City-operated fire suppression, EMS-related response, fire prevention, life safety and departmental support.
The source page reports approximately $160.6 million for Fire across all funds, compared with $157.6 million in the General Fund.
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.
The detailed revenue lines reconcile exactly to the $739,605,671 adopted General Fund total.
The adopted budget shows $359,566,991 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 170,452-parcel assessed-value total as the denominator.
The Florida League of Cities analysis reports averages for 42,978 Orlando homestead parcels. These figures describe current exemptions and Save Our Homes effects, not a city revenue-loss projection. 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 Orlando 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 54.28%.
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 59.4% 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 54.3% of the typical homesteaded property value shown in the separate homestead dataset.
Several residents ask whether property taxes are the entire budget. They are not. Orlando's General Fund is about 41% of all-funds citywide spending, and property taxes are one of several General Fund revenue sources.
The answer depends on which number is being discussed. The FY2026 adopted budget shows General Fund revenue and property-tax revenue both increased, while total all-funds spending decreased slightly compared with the FY2025 adopted budget.
Budgets can be reduced, but the hard question is where. Some spending is tied to staffing, contracts, public-safety operations, maintenance cycles, infrastructure, technology, facilities, or restricted funds.
Fire suppression, fire prevention and EMS-related emergency response are city-operated through the Orlando Fire Department.
Property taxes are flexible recurring revenue and support the same General Fund that pays for many day-to-day city services.
No. It explains the current budget structure and the scale of recurring revenue. Actual decisions would depend on the final legal language, state action and future budget choices.
The tier file covers a broader residential parcel universe, while the Florida League of Cities dataset is limited to homestead parcels.
Orlando’s taxable value is approximately 18.31% homestead, 74.19% non-homestead and 7.5% other property.
City budget figures were taken from Orlando’s FY2025–26 adopted budget material. Homestead, taxable-value, $250,000 threshold and parcel-tier figures came from the project datasets listed below.
