Tax base per acre

Pattern

Blocks, streets and what each pattern pays

Walkable blocks are small, so each acre faces more street. Whether a pattern pays its way depends on whether the value it puts on each acre covers that extra street.

For comparison: the SmartCode’s largest allowed block

• T3 Sub-Urban: blocks up to 3,000 ft around232 ft of street per acre or more
• T4 General Urban: blocks up to 2,400 ft around290 ft of street per acre or more
• T5 Urban Center / T6 Urban Core: blocks up to 2,000 ft around348 ft of street per acre or more

Street per acre is the median, for parcels in each group, of the perimeter divided by the area of the 2020 Census block around the parcel. Upkeep uses one cost for every street, $715 per foot of frontage rebuilt every 40 years (half of FDOT’s generic new two-lane urban street), so it overstates the cost of quiet residential streets and understates wide arterials. Tax is every levy on the bill. Patterns are assigned by a stated rule, not a survey.

Risk

Where the tax base sits

None of the property tax on these parcels comes from land in a FEMA high-risk flood zone or the coastal high-hazard area.

Shares are of each group’s yearly property tax, by where the middle of each parcel falls; a centroid test does not say whether the building itself is exposed. Zone edges were generalized for display (roughly 30 to 90 m), so parcels near an edge may be tagged either way. The ten published parcels are all outside both zones; load the 1,065-parcel sample with the parcel tools further down to include the rest of downtown.

Who keeps a new tax dollar

Run a new building through the tax bill

$17K a year in property tax. $562 of it (3%) goes to the county and city budgets, counting the county’s library and sheriff levies, which are earmarked for those services. Another $11K (63%) goes to the redevelopment trust fund, which spends it on public works and programmes in the district under the CRA plan, often the same streets and drainage the building needs.

• Redevelopment trust fund (CRA)$11K63%
• Lower school tax rates statewide (required local effort)$2,98718%
• School district$2,37214%
• Escambia Children's Trust$3802%
• Escambia County$3482%
• City of Pensacola$2141%
• Water management district$210%

• Inside a CRA, 95% of the new county and city tax goes to the redevelopment trust fundIt is spent in that area under the CRA plan, not in the general budget. School tax never goes to a CRA. The 95% is the statutory figure; this CRA’s own ordinance and agreements were not checked. Borrowing against the increment without a referendum is allowed only if bondholders cannot force a property tax levy (Strand v. Escambia County, 992 So. 2d 150 (Fla. 2008), as summarized in Hawkins, Land Use Law in Florida, 2021). (s. 163.387(1)(a); s. 163.340, F.S.)
• The state-required school levy mostly lowers school tax rates statewideThe school formula counts this levy as the district’s required local effort on 96% of taxable value, and Escambia’s state aid falls by about as much. The Legislature sets the total required local effort for all districts together (s. 1011.62(4), F.S.), so new value here lets the required school millage fall a little everywhere: other districts raise less locally and get more state aid, and total school funding does not change. The gain goes to school taxpayers across the state, not to schools. That holds within a year; over several years the Legislature sets the total knowing the tax roll, so where the gain ends up is less certain. The other 4% stays with the district on paper, but it roughly matches what is never collected: early-payment discounts of up to 4% (s. 197.162, F.S.) and unpaid tax. So the district’s net gain is probably close to nothing. The offset comes a year or more later: a new building enters the roll the next 1 January, and aid is set on certified values. This is our reading of s. 1011.62(4) and (15), F.S.
• One big taxpayer is not a permanent baseEquipment loses taxable value as it ages, and a single large customer can leave. In the Texas shale boom, school districts’ tax bases roughly tripled while revenue per student rose about 15%, and their debt per student roughly tripled (Marchand and Weber, 2020).