June 15, 2026
Members of Brevard City Council listen to Brevard City Manager Wilson Hooper (far right) discuss budget revisions at Brevard City Hall on June 15. Jonathan Rich/BrevardBeagle.com
Jonathan Rich
BrevardBeagle.com
Monday night Brevard City Council approved City Manager Wilson Hooper’s $27,422,661 budget for the next fiscal year and the 2.5-cent increase in property tax rates to pay for it, but it was not exactly the same 2026-27 budget elected officials and the public first saw more than a month ago.
When Hooper brought his initial budget before the council on May 4, it included provisions to fund 96-gallon tipper carts at each city address for quicker and safer garbage collection, but that amenity was removed during the June 5 budget workshop.
That budget suggestion 10 days ago accompanied several others in Hooper’s funding plan for next year, including an $11,000 reduction in annual funding for the non-profit Heart of Brevard downtown business organization and a lower municipal service district tax paid by downtown property owners in addition to the annual property tax for extra services.
The final budget presented to City Council Monday night did retain the previously proposed 4% increase to utility fees for recycling and cardboard collection and it passed with those elements in a 4-1 vote to make room for other more pressing municipal needs next year.
SPORTS COMPLEX IMPROVEMENTS = $57,000
One major addition to the budget for next year is $57,000 to pay for improvements at the city-owned Brevard Sports Complex on Ecusta Road.
That expenditure lept to the top of the want list after an April 21 incident when an intoxicated driver ran his truck over a 7-year-old boy on his bicycle crossing the parking lot area between the skate park and the dog park.
City of Brevard Sports Complex. Jonathan Rich / BrevardBeagle.com
City leadership previously stressed that better sinage, marked parking, and wider turning areas are needed to increase safety at the public skate park, dog park, baseball and soccer fields.
Local residents attending the June 1 City Council meeting also expressed their displeasure at the lack of sanitation services adjacent to the $1.1 million artificial turf soccer field installed by Transylvania Youth Soccer Association in 2023 where portable toilets remain the closest restroom facilities.
To pay for improvements at the public recreational facility, City Finance Director Dean Luebbe suggested the formation of a Sports Complex capital project fund comprised of $46,000 from the city’s general fund and $11,000 in city money that was remaining from previously dedicated federal funds for revitalization projects in the Rosenwald Community.
At Monday night’s meeting, City Councilman Dean Lytle asked to rename this new capital project fund within Hooper’s revised budget to reflect safety and sanitation improvements and needs at all city-owned community recreation facilities and public parks.
Councilwoman Patricia Holder attempted to compound that name change when she said she thought previous budget conversations included specific provisions for improvements at Silversteen Park in the Rosenwald community which currently only has portable toilets for use by those adjacent to the TYSA field.
Holder wanted to request adding $300,000 in the budget as part of a larger and revised legislative request from the city to state officials for funding the creation of new restroom facilities at Silversteen Park, but that was ultimately not part of the total budget approved for the next fiscal year.
The discussions eventually circled back to specifically state that the new dedicated capital fund should be used for improvements at the Sports Complex.
“What’s clear is that establishing a fund is also establishing a priority by Council and an ongoing priority that might involve multiple projects,” suggested Mayor Pro Tem Aaron Baker, who then explained why a capital fund by any other name might not sound as sweet or be remembered later as dedicated for a specific purpose.
“We all up here have concerns about the ongoing maintenance of our parks systems. Establishing a parks fund would signal to the public that we recognize that this is something we need to pay attention to in the future,” Baker said, “but the trade off is that if you put money into a specific project, like the Sports Complex, and then there is additional money that is left over the expectation from the public is that the leftover money should be used on parks. There may be another need in another future budget year where that money should be better spent.”
Ultimately Monday night, Baker and his fellow council members made the decision to budget the money through a parks and recreation capital fund to make it clear this funding should be used for planning improvements at the City of Brevard Sports Complex.
“I think we need to do a better job of when there is contingency money left over after a project of making a decision then and there whether it should stay in that capital project fund and under that larger fund or whether it needs to be returned back to the general fund when we close that project out,” Baker concluded. “What we’re talking about is design funds. We’re going to need a whole lot more money on top of this for construction. We’re nowhere near the finish line where we’re going to be talking about leftover money.”
EMPLOYEE COST OF LIVING COMPENSATION INCREASES FROM 2.7% TO 3%
City Manager Hooper introduced another possible use for the $28,000 surplus created by removing the proposed new residential trash cans from his initial budget: using that money to increase the cost of living adjustment (COLA) for full-time city employees from his initially proposed 2.7% to a full 3% in terms of an across-the-board compensation raise in wages and benefits.
This chart shows the possible impact of the proposed city budget on several typical taxpayers given their income levels and utility rates with comparisons over several years. City of Brevard
This investment in retaining and recruiting city employees, however, would still take place if City Council approved the proposed 2.5% city property tax increase that equates to $87.18 more a year for a taxpayer owning a home within the city limits with an assessed value of $350,000.
“It occurred to me that $28,000 is exactly the amount of money we need to bump the adjusted COLA from 2.7% to %3%,” Hooper said. “Moving up from 2.7 to 3 will make it a little bit easier on our employees.”
That position was echoed by most members of Brevard City Council on Monday night.
“Moving from 2.7 (percent) to 3 (percent), I can get behind that,” said Councilman Lytle, “I think that we can be, need to be, and will be the best employer in the county. I really want us to strive for that, and obviously, compensation is part of that.”
As the budget includes an increase in some fees to help pay for elements such as this increase in employee compensation, Lytle said he hoped all constituents would understand why the property tax increase was a necessary evil at this time.
“I’m happy with the budget,” Lytle said of his vote for the overall plan. “Not everyone is as happy, and that’s to be expected, but this being my first budget it was a process where I learned a lot. I hope the public can get behind it and eventually understand why we did what we did.”
Councilman Lauren Wise also voted for the employee COLA increase and, reluctantly, the property tax increase which will be used to fund it.
“We have a lot of people working for us at the city where they could earn a lot more money working in the private sector. They probably wouldn’t get yelled at by as many people. They wouldn’t work as many hours. They work tirelessly for all of you, and I think we need to signal to them that as a community,” Wise responded regarding the COLA increase. “I’m speaking as a taxpayer here; some of our biggest complaints are about road maintenance, potholes, sidewalks, conditions of our parks, fire, police … I do feel an incremental increase is better than dropping a 20% bomb on a community of a tax increase. So in many ways, this is an effort of how to hurt the most people the least.”
Councilman Baker also voted for the employee cost-of-living percentage increase, but he added that the additional property tax would hire three full-time positions to the Public Works Department and increase staffing at the Brevard Fire Department.
“The 2.5% property tax increase really boils down to additional firefighters and the need to maintain our level of service in fire protection, additional public works employees, because we recognize the level of service and the level of maintenance that we would like our city to have,” Baker said. “I don’t like to respond to the dark corners of the internet, but sometimes folks think we are raising taxes because we want a tree-hugging festival or a tourist-hugging festival, but we’re talking about firefighters, city employees, and public works. I’m proud that we’re maintaining service levels for our citizens and taking care of some long-needed maintenance issues in the Public Works Department. We’re doing the basics really well, and these things are important to the people of Brevard.”
“I will go with the 3 percent, but my hesitation is that we had talked about giving merit raises,” said Councilwoman Patricia Holder before voting to approve next year’s fiscal budget. “I would like to look at opportunities for merit raises in the future because I think they are important.”
It seemed it was the lack of including merit-based raises in this year’s budget that prompted Councilman Daniel to be the one dissenting vote against approving the entire budget.
“I feel like keeping our highest-performing employees is critical to the successes that we’ve had already, but we should not lose sight of the merit-raise issue,” Daniel said before the COLA increase and the overall budget was passed 4 votes to 1.
City Council typically cancels at least one of its Monday meetings once the budget for the next fiscal year has been passed, but City Manager Hooper requested the July 20 meeting still take place and Mayor Maureen Copelof agreed.
“We have an incredible amount of work going on,” Copelof said at the close of Monday night’s two-and-a-half-hour meeting. “I do want to thank the staff. I want to thank the public. I want to thank the elected officials who have wrestled with a very tough budget year trying to balance all of the different needs that we have across the city. I think we’ve come up with a very good, fair, balanced budget that listened to the public.”