Seminole forecasts $18M revenue drop

Budget officials warn of decline in funds due to economic shutdown

Seminole County expects a nearly $18 million decline in revenues this year because of the economic shutdown caused by the coronavirus pandemic, county budget officials warned commissioners during a budget hearing on Tuesday.

Revenues for next year do not look any better, County Manager Nicole Guillet said, and her staff is “looking at potential cuts” across the board as Seminole begins its annual process of putting together its 2020-2021 budget, which begins Oct. 1.

Without any cuts, the county would have to search for other ways to make up a more than $19.1 million shortfall expected in next year’s $259 million general fund budget, including dipping into reserve funds, officials said.

“We’ve always budgeted conservatively,” Commissioner Brenda Carey said. “But the recovery is not going to be fast, like people think it is. People are not going to go out to dinner [so soon]. They are not going to go to stores…. And that’s going to impact our sales tax.”

Seminole expects to lose nearly $3.9 million in revenue from the penny sales tax from March 1 — just before the time when businesses began to shut down because of the pandemic — through Sept. 30, according to preliminary estimates.

Seminole tacks on an additional penny to the state sales tax of six cents for every dollar spent. The revenue from penny is split with the school district, the county and Seminole’s seven cities, and is used for roads, trails, school buildings and classroom equipment.

Orlando police are searching for a suspect who shot at a car at an apartment complex Sunday, injuring a 12-year-old girl.

After the shooting, two women in the vehicle told police they believed the shooter was an exboyfriend of one of the women, with whom she had been fighting for over a year, according to an incident report.

But an OPD spokeswoman said Tuesday that agency investigators interviewed the man and “eliminated him as a suspect.”

No one has been arrested in the shooting, though spokeswoman Autumn Jones said detectives “are already working on some other leads to determine who the shooter might have been.”

The shooting happened about 12:30 a.m. Sunday at the Windsor Cove Apartments on Mercy Drive. The women in the vehicle told police they had driven there to purchase marijuana and, as they were leaving, heard gunshots. One bullet shattered the window on the rear driver’s side. That’s when the 12-year-old girl cried out from the back seat that she had been shot, according to the report.

The driver of the car said she didn’t see the shooter, but thought it may have been her ex-boyfriend, who lives in the area. She said he had “been coming over to her apartment complex and vandalizing her vehicle,” the report states.

The woman in the passengers seat gave police a description of the person she saw shooting and also said she believed it was the ex-boyfriend.

But Jones said the man did not match the description of the shooter that the victims gave police.

The girl, who had been shot in her arm, was taken to a hospital, where she was treated. OPD said Sunday she was in stable condition.