But we’re going to focus on Winter Garden for reasons that’ll be clear in a moment.

In online discussions, I’ve seen a lot of grumbling from the Yes on 3 camp about wanting to end “wasteful” and “abusive” government spending and that local governments should tighten their proverbial belts and live more frugally on budgets like the rest of us.

But what would that look like in practice?

Here’s why we’re focusing on Winter Garden. The city just released a Budget What-If Tool that lets residents put themselves in the budget director’s seat and do the belt-tightening themselves.

City Manager Jon Williams asked me for some feedback on the Budget What-If Tool’s clarity and usability, so I tried it out a few weeks ago before it went live.

This tool is super easy to use. And that’s coming from someone who does not particularly relish pouring over budget books and still relies on my 20-year-old for help navigating Instagram.

To use the tool (find it at the city’s new budget portal), Winter Garden residents need to log in with their water bill account number. After that, it’s a bit like playing a business simulation game. But instead of building a virtual zoo or a restaurant empire, we’re modeling “spending reductions” for Winter Garden’s General Fund, and the stakes are real.

The “rules” in the scenario we’re playing with here are that the city is down $5.2 million in lost property tax revenue for 2027. Police and fire-rescue departments are 80 percent funded and facing a $7.44 million deficit. The “objective” is to close the budget gap.

At no point is there an option to impose fees on citizens or raise the millage rate to close the funding gap. Instead, we are armed only with the total authority to cut-cut-cut. Personally, I'm envisioning myself holding giant pruning shears, ready to hack off all the "waste."

Axing events

For those, like me, who don’t geek out over city budget books, awaiting the next release with the anticipation of a new Jodi Picoult novel, the tool provides the Cliffs Notes version of what the city does. Services are divvied up into core and non-core.

Core services are Public Safety (police, fire-rescue), General Government (city clerk, city manager, city commission, legal, finance, information technology, fleet and facilities management, human resources) and Public Services (streets, engineering, cemetery). Non-core services are everything else: special events, parks, museums, economic development and recreation programs.

First to be pruned in my “spending reduction” plan are the special events. I'm mixing my metaphors here, but if a budget is like a buffet, then producing free special events before the police and fire-rescue departments are fully funded is like skipping ahead to the dessert station before we’ve eaten our collective peas. Free special events are part of what makes Winter Garden attractive, but it’s hard to rationalize, say, a free concert, if the city can't afford to hire and equip its first responders.  

Interestingly, zeroing out the 33 city-produced events just nets $916,000, according to the impact explanation. Lost would be the Friday night music on the Plaza along with the Heritage Festival, Bloom & Grow, celebrations for Juneteenth, July 4 and Martin Luther King, Jr., plus the December holiday events, including Santa Run and the golf cart and holiday parade.

If this were an actual business simulation game, there might be options to “get sponsorships” or “sell tickets” to preserve the events and make them revenue neutral — ideas that have been raised in city commission meetings.

Next to be cut is the Heritage Depot Museum. It costs the city $21,000 annually to document and display its citrus and railroad history. Again, charming, but not essential.

We've chopped two items that give Winter Garden its distinctive character, and we haven’t even cut $1 million yet. There’s still $4.26 left to trim.

Axing the city’s recreation programs nets $1.3 million. This is a big target, and here’s where residents may start to feel the pinch. With that $1.3 million goes youth sports, summer camps and the gap camps that keep kids busy during fall and winter breaks when parents are working. No more adult fitness classes either. And staff cuts mean the city pool will be closed more often too.

Then I turn to the Parks Division budget, stripping it to the bare minimum required for safety purposes. That brings another $2.86 million. The effect will immediately be felt downtown as all decorative and seasonal landscaping stops. In addition, multiple parks would close, and restrooms would be locked because the city would not have staff to service them. Non-urgent repairs would be deferred and improvement plans suspended. Mowing frequency would be cut from weekly to bi-weekly.

Those choices would close 99 percent of the funding gap. For the last 1 percent, I look at two departments categorized as non-essential — Planning and Economic Development. Economic Development has a slightly larger budget ($1.39 million compared to $1.12 million), and by trimming its marketing and administrative expenses by $70,000, we can close the funding gap of $5.20 million.

Mission accomplished. We tightened the belt and sacrificed some qualify of life, but we preserved the core services and funded the city. High-fives all around.

Except … looking ahead, as city officials are prone to doing, the city is still only 61 percent funded for 2028 when the $250,000 property tax exemption kicks in. For that year, the police and fire departments have only 71 percent of the funding they require — they’re $11 million short.

Cork the champagne. We still have cuts to make.

Cut to the Core

Of course, all of the 2027 cuts remain and we have to go deeper. My first thought was to cut expenses from the Planning Department. But when I trimmed just 5 percent or $56,000 in discretionary expenses, a message popped up that said, “Development review, zoning applications, and statutory planning functions face significant delays.”

I backed off on that because delays could be run afoul of a new Florida statute, House Bill 803, which went into effect July 1. The new law mandates shorter turnarounds — some just five days — on permits for projects under $15,000 or those just involving a single trade. That route did not look feasible.

I reluctantly clicked the Core Services button.

I’d resisted cutting core services in the first round because they all seemed so … well … core. All of the government, public safety and public services popped up.

I skimmed the listings. Where to cut? Finance? Legal? Information technology? I couldn’t imagine the city running effectively without any of those departments. Then … cemetery services. Cemetery services? Maybe the city itself didn’t need to be in the cemetery business. I trimmed $187,000 and left enough funding for grounds maintenance.

I took 35 percent out of the Streets Division budget. That meant potholes wouldn’t get fixed quickly. Roads wouldn’t be resurfaced regularly. Rights of way wouldn’t be mowed as frequently. But something had to give, and in my budget, this was it.

I went back to non-core services and zeroed out the remainder of the Economic Development Department, leaving the city’s ability to bring new businesses to the area and support downtown revitalization efforts “significantly diminished,” according to the warning window that popped up.

And the budget for 2028 was still $844,000 short.

To get the rest, I began making deeper cuts. I took another 15 percent out of the Streets Division, cutting the budget by a full 50 percent.

Then I started in on the general government departments because that was the only sector left.

The budgets for the city manager, city clerk, city attorney, and the Finance, Engineering and Information Technology Departments were all cut by 5 percent, taking between $26,000 to $129,000 out of each of their budgets. Human Resources and Facilities Management were cut by 15 percent.

I cut the city commission’s budget by 50 percent, eliminating the community grant money the commission awards to private organizations, local nonprofits and arts organizations. This would hit hard for low-income seniors who rely on help with their utilities. The cuts would eliminate the Senior Utility Assistance Program, which provides discounts on water bills for eligible seniors, just as water bills would increase by 20 percent in October 2027 and then another 7 percent in 2028. The increases were passed in 2024 to help pay for upgrades to the city's wastewater treatment facilities.

Downstream effects

In the end, the only departments that came through fully funded were Building Inspection because it is revenue neutral and Fleet Management, which services the vehicles and equipment used by police, fire-rescue and other city departments. I figured I didn't want to nickel and dime the mechanic who's responsible for making sure the brakes work.

You can run multiple scenarios with the Budget What-If Tool, and I ran a few. The first time I ran the budget, I couldn’t close the $8.50 million budget gap and I started over.

The second time, I zeroed out everything except the bare essentials required to run the city. And the third time, which I'm writing about here, the cuts were more surgical, but they still went deep into the sectors that affect not just the quality of life but essential services too.

Choosing what to cut is harder than it appears from behind a keyboard on Nextdoor. And, of course, one resident’s “waste” is another’s “must have.” The last time I was in one of our city’s parks, was when I watched my son (now 20) playing on a playground. But despite my eagerness to slash the parks budget in my scenario, I do want the city parks open and maintained — with fully stocked restrooms, please! — for others to enjoy today.

The deep cuts I had to make to close the funding gap in the scenario, come with downstream ramifications that may take time to materialize. In our city simulation, it’s possible that without at least some special events, downtown's retail mix could change. Events are part of the connective community fibers that are harder to quantify. They help provide foot traffic to the shops and restaurants on Plant Street and the cross streets, especially around the holidays. Meanwhile, without homestead property taxes to rely on, Florida Tax Watch anticipates that cities will raise taxes on small businesses, among others, to help close their funding gaps, noting, “… a significant portion of the lost revenue [would be required] to be generated somewhere else …”

With Winter Garden's high downtown rents and a potential for higher taxes and lower foot traffic, some downtown businesses theoretically may not survive.

Hey, it’s all fun and games until we vote in November.