Vero Beach finally filed its second late audit nearly four months past the due date, but the city’s finance staff still struggles with the most basic accounting duties, causing a new violation of state law for misstating taxes to be assessed.
An error resulted in a wrong property tax amount to be printed on Truth in Millage (or TRIM) notices sent out to taxpayers. Apparently no one double-checked the numbers entered into the Florida Department of Revenue portal system.
Unfortunately, this error once again put Vero Beach on a state bureaucrat’s desk as a problem to handle. The city has twice been late in filing mandatory audits and financial reports, resulting in the withholding – and in one case the forfeiture – of state sales tax funding.
Vero must now cure its legal problems with the Florida Department of Revenue by holding a re-hearing of its tax rate and 2025-26 operating budget to fulfill statutory requirements.
“Your taxing authority must correct the errors immediately or be subject to the loss of revenue sharing and ad valorem revenues from millage in excess of the rolled-back rate,” Florida Department of Revenue Executive Director Jim Zingale told Vero City Manager Monte Falls in a Nov. 4 notice.
Vero City Councilman Aaron Vos explained in a message to constituents that “the issue stemmed from a data entry error on the Budget Summary sheet, where the total Ad Valorem tax revenue was reported as less than 95 percent of the gross taxable value, in violation of State Statute 200.065 (2)(a)1.”
The reported total was $13,754,099 but should have been no less than $13,928,211, Vos said.
“The understated amount of $174,112 corresponds to funds under the Downtown Economic Development Zone Tax Increment Funding (TIF). This was strictly a reporting error and did not affect the adopted millage rate; therefore, no adjustments to property taxes are required,” Vos said.
County Property Appraiser Wesley Davis said, “I’ve never seen a notice like this before,” and explained that there is no local process for checking the accuracy of the figures published on taxpayers’ TRIM notices.
Everything is entered into a state portal by each city, county, special district or school board. The state then compiles the numbers, spitting back the ones Davis and Tax Collector Carole Jean Jordan need to do their work locally. It was Jordan’s staff that notified Davis on Nov. 5 of the state’s discovery.
Florida Department of Revenue spokesperson Bethany Cutillo said, “the Department of Revenue’s review of 2025 Truth in Millage packages from the taxing authorities is about 58 percent complete.”
Of the 376 taxing authorities with completed reviews, the Department of Revenue has issued TRIM violation letters to nine of them, requiring them to re-advertise and re-hold their budget hearing.
Errors related to the noticing and advertising of taxes or tax rates are indeed rare – fewer than 3 percent of taxing authorities so far this year. Most of the other government entities cited were small places like Fort Meade (pop. 5,300), Gretna (pop. 1,284), and Fruitland Park (pop. 8,900).
Some cities reported the proper numbers to the state but advertised incorrect numbers in published notices. The Town of Indialantic (pop. 3,117) on the Melbourne barrier island was cited for not having the required votes for its tax increase.
The City of Riviera Beach with nearly 40,000 people had a bigger error than Vero, understating its tax levy by more than $6 million.
Falls, Finance Director Lisa Burnham and the finance staff still have a long way to go to restore the public’s trust in the city’s financial reporting through transparency. As of press time Monday, the “most recent quarterly financial report” posted on the city’s Finance Department web page is for the quarter ending June 30, 2023.
Staff was instructed this spring to begin preparing regular financial reports to publicly present to city council members – something that had not been done for at least six years during Falls’ tenure in the city manager’s seat.
Councilman Taylor Dingle raised the issue in May, demanding monthly financial reports in digital form that both the council and the public could review, with Mayor John Cotugno saying staff could delay the start date of this reporting until August to give them time to catch up on past-due audits.
The volunteer Finance Commission, which is designed to delve more deeply into city finances than the council has time for at its business meetings, only met twice in 2025 – once in January and then not until October 9th.
Finance Department missteps have wreaked havoc with the Vero Beach Police Pension Plan over the past year, requiring a re-statement of the plan that the Police Pension Board must deal with at its Nov. 19 meeting. But fortunately, all previously withheld pension funds from the state have been restored since the filing of the 2023-24 audit reports.
