August 31, 2026 Town Council Budget Workshop — Agenda Breakdown

The headline: 150% and 173% raises for the Mayor and Council

What it is. The schedule's Legislative page proposes new pay for every elected seat:

Together the five seats go from $39,564 to $104,970 — an increase of $65,406, about 165%, and about a fifth of the entire town-wide increase in this schedule. The current figures are not new: the workbook budgeted the same $39,564 for elected salaries (account 001-0511-511-1100) in both FY2025 and FY2026, and its FY2024 figure is consistent with the same five salaries plus the Town Clerk's, before the clerk's wages moved to their own account.

The same page raises the Town Clerk's salary from $64,735 to $67,000 and doubles the Deputy Town Clerk's, from $22,801 to $45,593.60 — the new figure works out to exactly $21.92 an hour over a standard 2,080-hour full-time year, which is consistent with a part-time position becoming full-time, though the schedule does not say. In all, the Legislative department goes from $127,100 to $217,563.60, up 71%.

What the packet doesn't say. There is no memo behind these figures — nothing naming who proposed them, what other towns pay, or why $32,970 and $18,000 are the right numbers. And a fact worth stating plainly, without any conclusion attached: the five salaries on this page belong to the five officials who will vote on the budget they are proposed for.

How a raise takes effect is its own question. The Town Charter speaks to it — incompletely, in the most literal sense. Section 2.05 says the Council "may determine the annual salary of the Mayor and Council Members by Ordinance, but no Ordinance." The official text ends the sentence there. The words after "but no Ordinance" are missing from the printed charter — in the current online code and in the printout attached to the Town's last charter amendment alike — so the sentence begins to state a restriction on a salary ordinance and never finishes the thought. What the missing words would have said, the printed text cannot say. For what the completed sentence looks like elsewhere: Apopka's charter, in the same county, ends the same sentence pattern with a rule that no compensation change takes effect until the terms that begin after the next regular election.

What the record does show is a choice already made about timing. In 2023 the Council adopted Ordinance 2023-8, a slate of charter-amendment ballot questions, and its Question 4 covered exactly this. The ordinance explains that the amendment "would allow Council to include the effective date of any increase in the Mayoral or Council salaries in the ordinance implementing the increase," and the code's history note records it as approved by voters on March 19, 2024 — though the codified text of Section 2.05 reads the same before and after it. No state law fills the gap either: a 2025 Florida House staff analysis states, "There are currently no statutory provisions governing the salaries of municipal governing body members."

Two more provisions sit near this one. An older section of the Town's general code, Section 2-52, says the Council "shall determine by resolution reasonable compensation to be paid to members of the town council," with existing compensation "determined by compensation listed in the town annual budget" — a different instrument than the charter's ordinance. And the charter's Section 5.06 puts ordinances "relating to appropriation of money, levy of taxes or salaries of Town officers or employees" outside the citizen referendum power — the tool residents can use to force reconsideration of most adopted ordinances does not reach this kind.

Worth watching. Whether these figures arrive at the workshop as a budget line, a resolution, or a draft ordinance is worth listening for — and so is any effective date attached to them. Under the charter's election calendar, the next regular town election falls in March 2028.

The other nine departments: three staff raises stand out

What it is. Most positions in the schedule get small raises or none — the Chief Administrative Officer and the Police Chief both stay flat. Three staff changes stand out for their size:

• Finance Director: $82,082 to $135,000 — up $52,918, about 64%, the largest single-position raise in the schedule.
• Evidence Clerk: $17,026 to $40,000 — up about 135%.
• Public Works Director: $86,514 to $100,000 — up about 16%.

Development Services is the schedule's largest department increase in dollars — $91,678 to $197,428, up $105,750 — and most of that is two positions with no current-year salary shown: a Planner at $60,000 and a Special Events Coordinator at $30,000. The schedule does not say whether they are new roles or existing ones being funded, or which fund pays for them. The Administrative Permit Clerk in the same department goes from $26,250 to $42,000, up 60%.

The only cuts are in the Police Department, and both are part-time lines: the five reserve officers' wages drop from $22,000 to $11,000, and one of three crossing-guard lines ($17,362.80) is removed. Everything else in the schedule holds or rises. The police page also lists the Deputy Chief position as vacant with no salary in either year, leaves a "Merit Pay" row blank, and raises overtime from $35,000 to $43,507.75 — the department's total rises less than 1%.

Worth watching. A salary schedule is where a budget's promises get specific. This one gives residents, for the first time this cycle, a number to ask about for every named position — and its quietest rows, the flat ones, are as much a policy choice as the raises.

The schedule vs. the forecast that balanced to the dollar

What it is. The July 23 workbook — the only town-wide budget document posted this cycle — forecast FY2027 General Fund revenue and spending at an identical $5,802,969, balanced to the dollar. This salary schedule can be checked against that forecast, because five departments' current-year columns match the workbook's budgeted salary accounts exactly: Legislative, Administration, Finance, the Post Office, and Recreation all tie to the dollar.

Where the comparison can be made, nearly all of the new money is in two places:

• Legislative: the workbook forecast $130,913 across the department's three salary accounts; the schedule proposes $217,563.60 — $86,650.60 above the forecast, most of it the elected seats ($104,970 proposed against a $40,751 forecast).
• Finance: forecast $263,542; proposed $312,407.20 — $48,865.20 above.

Together that is roughly $135,500 above the figures inside the balanced forecast. The other three checkable departments land close to their forecasts — Recreation about $820 above, Administration and the Post Office just under. The remaining pages — Police, Development Services, Public Works, and the two utility funds — group positions differently than the workbook's fund accounts, so they cannot be checked line for line. The police page's current-year total of $1,067,560.69, for one, lands between two workbook readings — about $49,000 above the workbook's police wage accounts without a $69,512 grant-reimbursed wages line, about $20,000 below them with it — and neither document says how that grant-reimbursed line maps onto the schedule's roster.

The pattern from the earlier workshops continues. On August 18, Recreation's slide proposed $194,600 for FY2027 — what that figure covers, the deck never defined — while this schedule's Recreation salaries alone total $215,494.83. That is a third set of Recreation numbers in three packets, and no document reconciles them.

Worth watching. The workbook still forecasts the contingency account to $0 for FY2027, and this packet does not revisit it. A $300,292 salary increase — all but $7,320 of it on the pages of General Fund departments, and all of it before payroll taxes and benefits — has to come from somewhere in a forecast that balanced at exactly zero. Which document governs, and what gives, is the question this workshop exists to answer.