FY2027 Budget Overview — Remaining General Fund

Public safety takes up nearly 60% of Tampa's $731.3 million general fund, and most of the attention that comes with it. This post covers the rest: $299.3 million spread across 27 departments that pays for parks, permitting, code enforcement, and keeping the city's buildings running. Charted below are the eight departments with at least roughly $11 million in general fund spending — together $244.6 million, about 82% of the remainder.

If there's a through-line, it's the same one as police and fire: personnel keeps growing nearly everywhere while capital falls to almost nothing. Parks & Recreation goes from a projected $27.4 million in capital spending this year to a $2.3 million recommendation, and Facility Management, Technology & Innovation, and the Convention Center all drop to effectively zero.

Jump to a department: Parks & Recreation · Technology & Innovation · Facility Management · Neighborhood & Community Affairs · Convention Center & Tourism · Revenue & Finance · Contract Administration Department · Development & Growth Management

Parks & Recreation

Parks & Recreation is the largest department left in the general fund after public safety, with an $88.4 million recommended budget for FY27. The story is capital: after actual capital spending of $16 million in FY24, $23.3 million in FY25, and a projected $27.4 million in FY26, the FY27 recommendation drops to $2.3 million. New money in the capital plan amounts to just two projects — Yellow Jacket ($1.5M) and citywide ADA improvements ($550K) — while projects like K-Bar Ranch Park, planned at $7.5 million, are left with only design money. Work already underway continues on prior-year appropriations. Personnel moves the other direction, growing from 430.6 to 454.52 positions.

Technology & Innovation

Technology and Innovation is a broad ranging department that deals with everything from the city's network, data systems, and cybersecurity to the software contracts and camera systems used citywide. That breadth shows up in the budget: operating costs have climbed from $9.3 million in FY24 to $16.1 million in FY27 as more of the city's software moves to subscription licenses, while capital drops to almost nothing. Because so many citywide licenses sit in this budget, it's not always clear which department spending actually belongs to — a question we raised with the $1.1 million Accela realignment, software used by Development & Growth Management.

Facility Management

Facility Management maintains the city's buildings — formally a division of the Logistics & Asset Management department, but budgeted as its own line. It's also a department that routinely spends well past its budget: FY26 was budgeted at $28.1 million and the city projects $53.6 million in actual spending, driven by capital carryforwards and unplanned repairs. Worth remembering when reading other departments' numbers: some projects that sound like someone else's — TPD headquarters improvements, fire station generators — live in Facility Management's capital budget. FY27 carries no capital at all.

Neighborhood & Community Affairs

Neighborhood & Community Affairs is where code enforcement lives — the city no longer has a standalone code enforcement department; that work runs through the Neighborhood Enhancement division — alongside neighborhood programs and workforce partnerships. It's a people department: $16.4 million of its $20.2 million FY27 budget is personnel, and it's one of the few in this group still growing year over year.

Convention Center & Tourism

The Convention Center is the closest thing to self-funding in the general fund: charges for services are budgeted at $15.3 million in FY27 against a $15.9 million budget. The big capital work — HVAC, electrical, fire suppression, structural repairs — has been financed through bonding rather than the operating budget, and FY27 capital falls to $300K after $12 million in FY26. Last summer council heard the results of an expansion market feasibility study for the center, so bigger asks may be coming.

One discussion that still needs to be addressed are how the bonding is paid. Part is paid by the Downtown CRA district and part comes from tourist tax dollars. There's discussion around the Rays stadium proposal to potentially cap or sunset the Downtown district as well as the MOU for the stadium deal includes using the tourist tax for stadium funding.

Revenue & Finance

Revenue & Finance is the city's accounting, treasury, and budget office — 93 positions, with personnel making up nearly the entire $15.1 million FY27 budget. It's also the department behind the city's OpenGov transparency platform, the source for the charts in this series, including the $2.7 million "Application Builder" purchase we questioned in March.

Contract Administration Department

Contract Administration is the city's construction-contract arm, managing design and construction contracts for major capital projects on behalf of other departments — Fire Station 24 and the Union Station renovation among them. Its own budget is almost entirely personnel ($13.5 million of $14.4 million in FY27); the dollars it moves show up in other departments' capital lines, not here.

Development & Growth Management

We took a longer look at Development & Growth Management last month when the city released an overdue fee study. DGM is the umbrella for everything development — permitting and inspections, land development coordination, architectural review, real estate — and the general fund subsidizes it to the tune of $6.65 million a year while permit fees no longer cover what the permitting operation costs and the reserves that covered the gap are effectively empty. The study recommends raising permit fees about a third, phased in over four years; a workshop to discuss it is planned for September, and staff has said nothing changes before March 2027. One caveat on the charts below: unlike most departments in this group, DGM's totals include money beyond the general fund — its FY27 general fund share is about $11.4 million of the $29.1 million shown.

Notes

The FY24 budget-vs-actual chart for Development & Growth Management shows an $87.5 million recommended budget, nearly triple the years that follow. That was a single $50.2 million capital line: the planned bond to seed a Community Land Trust. The city went as far as establishing the fund — "Series 2024 Community Land Trust Debt Proceeds" still sits in the city's chart of accounts — but the money was never spent (actual DGM capital spending in FY24 was $757K) and the Community Land Trust fell off the radar.