The Cade

Start with the headline, because it is the highest number this series has published. The total on the 2025 final roll is 19.9197 mills. For comparison, the two Naples projects in this same batch carry 9.0201, and the highest Sarasota code, a downtown improvement district, carries 16.8815. This city is a different tax world from the Gulf Coast pages in this series.

We reconciled it rather than quoting it, because the county publishes a figure that will mislead you. The components are city, county, schools across two lines, a juvenile welfare board, emergency medical services, a transit authority, a water management district and a planning council, and they sum to the certified figure exactly. A county health line that appears on the published table is not part of this city's total and overshoots it precisely. That is how we know the breakdown is right.

Two figures you may be quoted that do not describe this address. The county publishes a typical city taxpayer total of 21.7097 for the coming year. It is an illustrative composite, it was still pending board action when we checked, and its water management line bears no relation to the water management millage actually levied here. Use the certified per-parcel figure, not the chart.

Now the genuinely favourable half, and we proved it rather than assuming it. There is no community development district, no municipal services taxing unit and no special assessment on this land. Across all 108,870 parcels in this city exactly ONE carries a non-zero special assessment, while 167,413 parcels county-wide do. The field is live and populated. This city is simply outside it.

The mechanism is different from every other county in this series and worth writing down. This county's district burden is an unincorporated area taxing unit plus flat fire and community service charges, and being inside a city is what switches it off. The county publishes that unit at 2.0857 mills for unincorporated taxpayers and zero for city taxpayers. Sarasota reaches the same answer by having no districts at all; a Lee County parcel reached the opposite one through an independent fire levy.

The parcel record confirms it a second way, which is the kind of corroboration we like. All four plat parcels carry the plain city millage code with no suffix. This county uses 53 codes and several are compound, bolting a fire district or a water management sub-district onto a city. The unsuffixed code is direct evidence that nothing attaches here.

On value, do not accept an estimated tax bill for this address from anyone. These parcels did not exist until the plat was recorded, so they have never run a tax cycle. Their tax and millage fields are empty, and there is no sale price, no sale date and no prior year record on any of them. The acquisition history sits on the superseded parcels. The condominium lot is carried at about $810,900 of land and nothing built.

One roll quirk to know before you read the record yourself. This county publishes only one roll, certified, and its two published views agree to the dollar on every parcel, which is not something this series can usually say. But the condominium lot is classified commercial on it while its use code and its permit are both residential. That is an artefact of a vacant entitled site awaiting a building, and it should flip once the building is added.

The practical version: the rate is high and it is the whole bill, which is a better position than a lower rate with a district bolted on. Ask for a real tax estimate on a real residence once the building is on the roll, and ignore any figure derived from the land value.

This address produces the most favourable hazard profile this series has published, and the most unfavourable postcode behind it. Both belong on the page.

Start with the ground, because everything else follows from it. Sampled at 33 points across all four plat parcels, the site runs 34.5 to 37.1 feet, and the building footprint alone 35.3 to 37.1, averaging about 36. The spread across the building site is under two feet, so unusually a single figure is defensible here. Elsewhere in this series a downtown parcel ran nearly eight feet across its own boundary and no single figure was.

Against the flood maps that elevation is decisive. A whole parcel query returns a single designation of minimal flood hazard, outside the special flood hazard area, with no base flood elevation at all. The same answer comes back for all four parcels queried together. There is no mandatory federal flood insurance purchase requirement attached to this ground.

We proved that negative harder than anywhere else in this series. A 300 metre buffer still returns the single minimal hazard designation. Only at 1,000 metres does the expected complexity appear, and then it appears in full: five distinct zones including coastal floodplain designations at base flood elevations of nine and ten feet. The nearest of those sits about 26 feet below this site.

The evacuation answer agrees, and this county's layer actually discriminates. Three independent county products return a non-evacuation designation here. We tested the layer against control points across the county and got three different values at four points, including the most exposed designation out on the barrier island. That matters because in a county further south the equivalent layer returns the same answer everywhere, including inland, and is useless.

Then there is the storm surge result, which is the most striking single finding here. The county publishes five separate surge depth models, one per hurricane category, and at this site all five return a negative value. Negative means the modelled surge surface sits below the ground surface. The site is modelled dry in a category five. For a downtown address a mile and a half from open water, that is the ridge doing its job.

Now the honest counterweight, because the postcode's record is severe. This postcode has recorded about 219 federal flood insurance claims and roughly $8.16 million paid across the life of the programme. September 2024 alone accounts for 30.6 per cent of every claim ever filed and 72.5 per cent of every dollar ever paid, while calendar 2024 accounts for 40.6 and 89.6 per cent. Those are two different measures and we keep them separate deliberately.

The gap between those two figures is the widest this series has measured, and it has a cause. A second storm the following month added another 15.7 per cent of lifetime dollars across 19 claims. Two distinct events in one season, not one. The contrast with the 1980s is instructive: one month in 1985 produced 23 claims and under $200,000, so events then were frequent and cheap and 2024 was the reverse.

One limit on that data nobody should pretend past. Of those 219 claim records, 171 carry no flood zone field at all. Nobody can compute a zone weighted claim rate from this file, and the honest conclusion is simply that the postcode's losses are concentrated in its waterfront and low-lying parts and this site is not one of them. Since 2024 the record is empty: no claims in 2025, and none recorded through the data freeze in 2026.

On schools this district is a choice district rather than a boundary district, so the answer is zoned rather than guaranteed. The zoned assignments verified three independent ways are North Shore Elementary, John Hopkins Middle and St. Petersburg High. Confirm with the district before you contract, because a controlled choice district can place a child elsewhere.