The First FY25/26 Budget Public Hearing
The city commission will host the first FY2025-2026 budget public hearing for October 1, 2025 - September 30, 2026 in Marble Hall and on Zoom on Thursday, September 11, at 5:05 p.m.
KCBers may want to ask our commissioners about the budgets and proposed tax increase.
The agenda includes a review of proposed budgets including the general budget and the utility board budget as well as resolutions to adopt a tentative millage rate and to to adopt the tentative budget.
The second and final budget public hearing will be held in Marble Hall on Thursday, September 18, at 5:05 p.m.
Read the Key Colony Beach Budget Public Hearing agenda and packet here.
Click or tap here to email your questions and comments to the commissioners and city clerk .
Join the 8/21/25 meeting from a PC, Mac, iPad, iPhone or Android device:
Please click this URL to join. https://us02web.zoom.us/j/85943659340?pwd=bZDhIV8ZAC304hmjqsaywna3i8mM3r.1
Passcode: 675435
The Final FY25/26 Public Budget Hearing
The city commission will host the final FY2025-2026 budget public hearing for October 1, 2025 - September 30, 2026 in Marble Hall and on Zoom on Thursday, September 18, at 5:05 p.m.
With the discussion centered lines of credit and on "depleting the reserves," People Are Asking about the cash position of the city.
In the first hearing, Commissioner Harding announced that the city hall project will eat up the Reserve fund, the Infrastructure fund, and "completely deplete" the Impact fund. The approved FY25/26 budget now shows $499,018 coming from reserves (none of that total appears earmarked for the city hall project).
As was reported in "Vanishing Reserves" in July:
$1,900,000 of the city hall construction cost remains in the "hardening" grant and the rest will come from KCB taxpayer-funded KCB reserves. KCB's infrastructure was the first in the Keys to recover from Irma because a prior commission contracted for and staged cleanup and debris hauling well ahead of hurricane season and the city had cash reserves on hand to pay immediate expenses of the cleanup.
That will no longer be the case here.
Mayor Foster said that "It's time to put a line of credit on the agenda." He conceded that could wait until October.
The budget doesn't report principal or interest payments for the year (KCB had total long term debt of $5,351,048 in 2022, according to the most recent audits online). The budget also doesn't report how much "reserve" is in city accounts.
The General Fund doesn't "sweep" excess cash into a separate account; that "reserve" is simply the amount of money in the cash accounts after all the bills are paid. The commission gets a full financial report with actual spending vs. the budget every month. The balance sheet gives the current financial position on the day the report is run.
"Where's the beef?" KCBers want to understand why our spending has skyrocketed while our reserves have dwindled. People Are Asking if the city could be about $800,000 "in the hole" by next September even before we count the spending for the city hall project? It looks that way, but no one seems to know for sure.
In order to understand the real numbers couldn't this hearing include our budget vs. actual spending in conjunction with the balance sheet?
KCBers may want to ask our commissioners about the budget, the cash flow, and the proposed tax increase.
The agenda includes a review of the general budget and the utility board budget as well as resolutions to adopt the millage rate of 2.82 ($2.82 per each thousand dollars of property) and to adopt the final budget of $21,655,240.
Read the Key Colony Beach Budget Public Hearing agenda and packet here.
Click or tap here to email your questions and comments to the commissioners and city clerk .
Join the 9/11/25 meeting from a PC, Mac, iPad, iPhone or Android device:
Please click this URL to join.
Passcode: 401130
