Mayor Wagner Explains 18% Property Tax Increase

Belize City homeowners are getting ready for something they haven’t seen in more than a decade, a property tax increase. After thirteen years without an adjustment, City Hall has announced an eighteen‑percent hike for 2026. Mayor Bernard Wagner says the change was inevitable. The city has been relying on a 2013 valuation model that no longer reflects today’s market or the rising cost of keeping municipal services running. And under the Town Property Evaluation Act, the council is legally required to update those valuations every five years. Now, that eighteen‑percent jump might sound alarming, but the mayor says most homeowners won’t feel the full brunt. With an incentive discount factored in, many residents could see only a slight bump in what they pay each year.

 

Bernard Wagner, Mayor of Belize City

“What that does for the city, it gives the municipality a true picture, a snapshot of the total value of all the properties in our city. So our valuation manager would reassess based on market pricing based on other variables and thereafter recommend the sort of assessment rate, right? The new assessment rate for developed properties or undeveloped properties. Mind you that we didn’t do this exercise since 2013. The last mayor to do it was Mayor Darrell Bradley, and he had all the right to do it. It’s a law, and he did it. And in 2017, going into 2018. He had conducted another exercise that would have taken the due assessment rate to thirty-eight. But I came into office in 2018 and I was not really clear on the rationale behind it. And so we sorta deferred it because we said we wanted to look at the rate, how he came about with it. And we said we would’ve implemented it in 2019 going into 2020. But it so happens that COVID came and so I could not justify in 2020 that I can raise property taxes with when we are in the midst of a pandemic. Now. If you are an astute person, you would say the council is doing a fifteen percent discount in January. Why not take advantage of that and use that?”