- This is a production of WEDU PBS, Tampa, St.

Petersburg, Sarasota.

[Music] On November 3rd, Florida voters will decide Amendment 3. to how property taxes work.

Would your property tax bill go down?

What might your city or county do with less revenue?

And would lower taxes on rental property mean lower rent?

We show you what the amendment would do.

You'll hear from a realtor who supports it.

A sheriff who opposes it, and the Hillsborough County property appraiser.

Then a former state senator, a retired fire chief and a county committee chair.

Join me at the desk.

Our goal today is to help you make an informed decision on Amendment 3, with facts and figures from all sides of the issue.

That's all next on Florida This Week.

[Music] Welcome back to Florida This Week, everybody.

I'm Lissette Campos.

On November the 3rd, Florida voters will decide on Amendment 3.

It needs 60% of the vote to pass.

Joining me to talk about it is Jim Large, the retired fire chief of St.

Petersburg Fire Rescue.

We have Jake Hoffman, chairman of the Hillsborough County Committee for Florida DOGE, and we have Jeff Brandes, a former state senator and the founder of the Florida Policy Project.

Thank you all for being here.

Before we begin, here's what Amendment 3 would do and what people on both sides are saying.

Take a look.

- The proposed property.

- Tax amendment has three main parts.

The homestead exemption would rise from about $50,000 to $150,000 in 2027, then to $250,000 in 2028.

That's for non-school property taxes.

The annual cap on assessment increases would drop from 10% to 5%.

That is on rentals, second homes, vacant land and businesses.

And the amendment would limit how cities and counties use property tax revenue.

It lists purposes that include public safety, education, infrastructure, among others.

The Florida Realtors board of directors is among the prominent voices in favor of the amendment, saying that it moves us closer to housing affordability.

- So the affordability will be tremendous, especially at a time now where I get calls to find out how I can lower my monthly payment, how I can refinance.

So this will be a great help for not just primary residents, but also investors.

- Not everyone agrees.

The Florida Sheriffs Association says it is, quote, significantly concerned, end quote, about Amendment 3.

Here's what Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd said at a news conference earlier this month.

- It does not protect law enforcement, fire emergency services as earlier editions of it supposedly did.

It doesn't provide for money to fix roads.

It's a train wreck.

- Bob Enriquez is the Hillsborough County property appraiser.

His office determines the value that a property is taxed at.

Here's how he explains the changes.

- Uh, there's a misconception that somehow this is going to do away with property taxes altogether.

It doesn't do that.

Um, a homesteaded property owner would still pay on the portion that's related to the schools and also the non-ad valorem taxes or fees that are added by local governments and taxing authorities.

- If it passes, Amendment 3 takes effect on January the 1st, 2027.

I want to start simple because this has so many different complex layers to it.

What's the one thing that you think voters need to understand about this?

Jeff.

I'd like to start with you.

- That largely this will be a tax shift, not a tax cut.

You take $12 billion out of state and local, out of local county governments and city governments.

They're going to shift taxes, and they're going to shift taxes to non-ad valorem.

And when they do that, non-ad valorem assessments are not subject to exemptions.

And so you're going to find weirdly things happen, like some homeowners are ultimately going to end up paying more after this passes.

- Jake, what would you say is the reason for having this approved?

- Well, ultimately people are paying too much in taxes and everything is more expensive than it ever has been.

And percentage wise, we're paying a lot more, especially as young people on these property taxes when we actually can afford to own a home, while many of them can't even get into their first one.

And at the end of the day, this is something that almost all the research will tell you is going to be between $1,000 to $2,000 back in people's pockets if you're a homeowner.

So that's real money going back to people to be able to spend on their needs and their, and the things that they're struggling with that are not going to go to the government, which is ultimately fairly bloated at a local level.

- When the two of you look at this, clearly you are in favor of Amendment 3.

Jeff, you have serious concerns.

You're against Amendment 3.

Um, what do you think?

Who do you think benefits the most if this passes?

Jeff.

- Well, I think homeowners that bought between 2020 and 2025 benefit the most.

People who bought prior to 2020 really will struggle with finding benefits.

Uh, and then renters.

Renters don't benefit at all.

A third of Floridians rent and they get no breaks out of this.

In fact, they pay higher taxes.

- And we'll talk about renters, how this applies to them in the next segment.

Jake, I want to make sure I get you to weigh in on this.

Who do you think benefits the most if Amendment 3 is passed?

- Yeah.

The obvious answer is homeowners.

And again, I think young people, because when you start looking at this from a percentage standpoint, I am going to pay more property taxes as somebody who did buy in 2020, and that's the generations after me are going to continue buying.

I'm going to pay more in my first ten years than somebody who's owned their home for 30 and paid off their mortgage.

That is the stark difference in the percentage of property taxes we are now paying as new homeowners.

So that is really who it is going to affect the most.

- So there are several phases, several several different items on this Amendment 3.

And it does talk about the rental properties, the secondary homes.

So let's talk about that for a minute.

Rentals, second homes, vacant land, commercial buildings.

Today the assessment can rise up to 10% a year.

Amendment 3 would lower that to 5%.

So Jake, what is the case that a lower cap will help the small businesses and the housing costs?

- Well, from a housing cost standpoint, again, when people go on Zillow and they look up, how much is this house going to cost me, it does an estimate of adding in all of these different fees together.

And look, if your property taxes are again, $1,000, $2,000 less, then that is a lot on a yearly budget.

So it is going to help make houses more affordable and ultimately renters look there.

Subject rental properties are subject to the market, the greater economy, what's going on, how many people are moving here?

We had obviously huge shifts during and after Covid with people coming into the state, and that changes rental properties.

So all of that stuff.

There are more factors than just property taxes when it comes to the rental price.

But at the end, at the end of the day, over a yearly budget, you are going to pay less on your on your homesteaded property.

- And you, Jeff, you just touched upon the fact that rents are not guaranteed to go any lower.

- The 10% to 5% cap is a useless benefit in most years in most of Florida.

And the simple truth is the Fed actually did a study on this and they said, listen, most of these taxes are going to get passed along between 58 and 85% of those taxes get passed along by landlords in higher rents.

And so ultimately, renters are the ones who are going to end up paying for the homeowners.

- Jim, you are the former fire chief of St.

Petersburg.

Thank you so much for joining us.

And like many of our viewers on Florida This Week, they tell us that they are undecided.

When you hear the different opinions from folks who say why they support it or why they are very concerned and won't.

As a former fire chief, how do you weigh the property tax relief that's being offered against the concerns about funding for essential services?

- Well, you know, it's kind of a little bit of a quandary for me.

Number one is a senior citizen retiree with high property taxes and living in St.

Petersburg as the fire chief.

The Florida fire chiefs have opposed Amendment 3, because I do think that it's going to affect jurisdictions around the state and it will be differently.

And so you know that that weighs on me.

But then I look at St.

Pete, where I worked, uh, fairly recent.

And I believe that St.

Pete voters will not suffer a loss of, of core services.

Um, if, if, if our elected officials do their job the right way.

Um, so it's tough because do I, do I vote for what benefits my family or do I vote for what benefits the industry?

And again, it's a tough challenge as I go back and forth.

But, um, you know, the dependent fire districts, they're going to, they're going to be challenged.

And, but I'm not concerned.

I support a fire fee.

I've pushed for it in the past.

I think, uh, fire department should be taken out of the ad valorem.

And again, so there's options that.

- And so Jeff, I'd like to ask you, what is your concern for that lack of equity if it's approved.

There are cities and counties that depend on the property taxes for the bulk of their revenue.

- Yeah.

Look, I mean, we just had a conversation with the City of Largo and the City of Largo came out and said, listen, we could close all of our parks, our library, and all of our recreation centers permanently.

And then we would only have to come up with another $5 million if we don't cut police and fire.

This is the difficult choice that communities are making, and I think the chief is exactly right.

It will be fine, but St.

Pete's also talking about putting on a non ad valorem fire assessment.

So we get into a place where this is again a tax shift, not a tax cut.

And communities are having to make very tough choices, especially if we're not going to impact public safety.

And one of the key tenets of the Republicans over the last few years has been not to defund the police, but the sheriff is clearly concerned about defunding the police.

So I think, you know, none of this was modeled.

None of them had data when they originally put this on the ballot.

And I think that's the big concern is we're running a live experiment on 23 million Floridians that nobody's modeled out.

- Jake.

So many people ask, is there a fat to cut from these budgets?

You come from the perspective of, you know, what you all found in your Hillsborough DOGE committee search.

Um, how do you how do you address that question?

- I think that what, what everybody said on this panel so far today is it is going to affect different places differently.

I believe Hillsborough County will be totally fine, totally fine.

We have a $12 billion budget this year.

We will have a $14 billion budget next year.

If this passes, that is 2 billion more dollars.

They are not going broke.

The sky is not falling.

The ambulance is going to show up.

The cops are going to show up.

And during our DOGE process, you know, we're all Republicans, right?

We don't want to defund the police.

I don't want to defund the police.

But we're not even allowed to look at the sheriff's budget.

We're not even allowed to look at the fire budget.

And these sheriffs around the state, they're some of the most powerful.

And they manage quite a big budget.

Let's just say that they manage a very large budget.

And it's almost there's almost no oversight onto it.

And so there is plenty of fat in there, guaranteed.

And then there's lots of fat in the general budget as well.

That was the point of DOGE was, hey, you spend $90 million on excess fleet, you spend $200 million, you label as miscellaneous.

Well, let's maybe let's label that.

And then again, we're talking about $300 million is generally the number I'm going to throw out for Hillsborough County.

If you label $200 million of it, miscellaneous, maybe you maybe you put a line item on that and then that's, that's the majority of what you're missing out on.

You don't have to go and raise other fees.

And they're going to raise other fees anyway.

They're going to raise stormwater this year anyway.

- The third piece of the Amendment 3 is to limit how counties and cities can use the property tax money.

The list does include public safety, education infrastructure, natural resources, bond debt.

Um, Jeff, you don't think that is going to go far enough or you don't think that's going to help?

- All it does is say first it just limits where they can use the money.

But there's a catch all provision that says basically anywhere else, they believe that's part of the administration.

So it's not a priority list.

It doesn't protect police and fire.

It's not a priority list by any means.

It's just saying, here's where we can you can spend the money.

But again, there's a catch all provision that says basically anything else they choose to vote on.

- Jim, based on your experience at the fire department, what would you say that voters should look at when they're evaluating.

- Based on the experience at the fire department?

Well, what I would tell you is I did the budget for 18 years, and I heard every year there's not enough ad valorem to cover police and fire.

I would always say there's plenty to cover fire.

It was police that would come up short, but they didn't agree with that.

The police always got first.

This past year, um, 21 million had to come out from somewhere else because, you know, they say that 100% of the ad valorem goes to police and fire in St.

Pete.

That's not true.

That's 26 million was taken right off the top.

That goes into CRAs.

These are things that need to be looked at, and that's what I would say from a fire perspective.

I would tell the voters I would not worry in St.

Pete about losing fire service or police service, I really wouldn't.

I would ask our elected officials, give us a list of what you're going to cut, where's the unnecessary spending versus the core services spending?

Because there's a lot of it.

When we talk about programs that aren't on that list, there's a lot of it.

And they're not they're discretionary programs.

They don't have to be done.

- And Jeff, in our prep work, you've talked about your concern that these are not one time cuts, that they are recurring.

Can you explain that to our viewers?

- Well, sure.

These are cuts that have to happen every year.

So yeah, you might be concerned about the Rays stadium, but that's again, one time money.

These cuts have come back every single year.

And after 2029 they actually grow with inflation.

Nobody knows what inflation is going to be 2029, 2030, 2035.

And so these cuts grow every single year.

And that's the big problem is the cuts don't stop.

They have to keep cutting.

So if they close the park today, it's not going to open tomorrow.

They're going to close another park.

You know, in order to make up for these cuts, or they're going to put on new taxes and new fees.

That's what I think people don't need to understand is that this is a largely going to be a tax shift, not a tax cut.

- Jake.

- I think that Jeff made the point that they are going to always add more taxes.

And I think we all know that as Republicans, they are going to add a new.

And that is the one sure thing, right.

Death and taxes.

And so this is one of the only opportunities in my lifetime that I can remember that we actually can go and take a real cut and actually cut taxes because they're going to keep raising taxes.

And it doesn't matter whether this if this fails, they're still going to raise taxes.

They're still going to keep increasing these fees every single year.

So this is one opportunity that we have to make some of these city budgets, city, city managers, counties, the state go back and actually legislate and maybe tighten their belts a little bit like everybody else does.

- As we said, Amendment 3 needs 60% to pass.

The ballot wording was rewritten after a judge found the original title and the summary were misleading.

You were one of the plaintiffs in the case.

Jeff, are you sure that the changes are enough?

- Well, I think the changes are at least constitutional with when it comes to the ballot summary.

Look, they told you on the initial ballot summary that it helped protect small businesses.

But literally nothing in the amendment says protecting small businesses.

They told you that it ensured funding for government, government, core services.

But again, the court found there was no insurance.

There was no guarantee that those fundings would exist.

They said that it would benefit all Florida taxpayers.

But again, a third of Floridians rent and they get nothing.

So the court rightfully threw it out.

The governor didn't even choose to challenge the court throwing it out, and they chose to rewrite it, which I think is appropriate.

And I think what they've put on the ballot now, at least with, in my opinion, is constitutional.

- Based on some of the surveys that we're looking at.

It is surprising to see that the shift in voter support is not significant, even after the rewriting.

Sachs Media survey conducted found 65% support among voters who read the revised language.

And before that, it was 60% who read the original.

One would think that there would be more.

A bigger shift towards.

- One of the fascinating things about these these surveys that are coming out is that they tend to show that the more people learn about it, the less they're likely to vote for it.

- Before we go, one last word from each of you on what you think that voters should really look at, um, before they make their decision, especially addressing the undecided voter.

Chief, I'd like to start with you.

- Well, I think one of the big problems that we've had with this is a lot of threats or fear mongering.

We're going to have to cut this, this and this.

But there's no specific list that's been developed.

The administration of whatever, you know, knows what the estimate is going to be, what the hit's going to be like.

St.

Pete's $33 million.

Okay.

Give us a list of.

As a voter, I need to know where are you going to get that 33 million that loss?

Where are you going to come up with?

How are you going to do it?

What what are you going to cut?

Don't just tell me that I might have to cut this.

I might have to cut that.

Give us specifics so we can make a sound decision on if we're comfortable with that.

And that hasn't happened.

It's just been threats or, or, you know, fears created that, oh, we probably have to close libraries or, or, you know, lay off firefighters or police officers.

So it's very hard to make a sound decision without knowing how it's truly going to impact you.

- Jake.

- I just believe that exactly as Jim just said, they're using certain public figures like sheriffs to fearmonger to you.

They are trying to, you know, pull at your heartstrings and say, you know, the ambulance is not going to come and the sheriff's not going to show up and everything.

But they did show up five years ago.

They showed up ten years ago.

They showed up 15 years ago with significantly, significantly less budget.

I think what people are forgetting and the point of doing DOGE around this state was to say your budget was almost half.

Only five years ago.

Four years ago.

And now we've doubled it.

So you've doubled it?

What did you get out of it?

In Hillsborough, they found $1 billion for a stadium like that as soon as they needed it.

We found $700 million in the DOGE committee.

They won't even give us a hearing.

They've already basically thrown it out.

So this, again, is one of the only opportunities you have to, to look at your elected officials and say, go do your jobs.

Actually cut the budget and make this work because everybody else has to do it.

- Jeff.

- Well, I think the thing people need to know is that it affects every city differently if you're home.

If you're in a city that has high homestead and modest values, you get hit radically harder than a heavily commercialized or industrialized city.

And so, and largely, I think I agree with the chief, look, you're going to have fire service.

The question is how you pay for it.

And if you're paying for it in special assessments that do not get exemptions, then you're going to find strange circumstances where people are ultimately paying more.

And on the question of affordability, I think actually this is one of the worst things we could possibly do for affordability, because it removes the incentives for cities and counties to have lower cost housing specifically for homeowners, because it's all exempt.

Historically, when you build something, it was, you know, growth equals benefit minus cost.

Now there is essentially no benefit to a $300,000 house growth just equals cost.

So you may be losing an entire level of entry level housing.

It's like we're chopping the bottom two rungs off the housing ladder with this amendment.

- We have heard from many young professionals who say that they are supporting Amendment 3, because they feel that this gives them a head start on building wealth.

- They need to do the math again, because the simple truth is down the down the road, cities and counties are going to react, and they're going to propose that you build an apartment complex instead of single family housing at that lower end, because there's just no benefit.

They're going to have to figure out how to subsidize that housing for years to come because it's essentially all exempt.

- And younger people like me will look at my neighbor who has the exact same priced home and say, I pay $6,000 a year.

They pay $2,000 a year.

It's a lot more.

It's a lot more.

Are the prices of our homes at the purchase at the time that we're purchasing right now, percentage wise, is higher than it ever has.

It's the percentage wise, it's lower for us.

It's like 10% at this point.

It used to be 50%.

You know, obviously we had a lot different state back then, but percentage wise, the older generations are getting a big break here and younger people are paying for it, and we don't really have the ability to pay for it because it's not we're not in a situation where we have all these assets.

- Well, one of the things that we haven't talked about.

- This doesn't address that inequity, right?

The assessed value still changes and this doesn't address that.

So even with this amendment, we aren't addressing the inequity of a long term buyer, a long term homeowner versus somebody who just bought this year.

- And I think that, you know, we haven't really touched on it, but there's still a moral argument here that what happens when you don't pay your property taxes for three years?

I know it happened in my family, is that it goes into foreclosure and it gets taken by the state.

And that's that is really at the core of why this needs to be addressed is because why do you not own your home?

If you fall upon hard times, can the state take your house because you didn't pay property taxes?

And for most of our history here, yes they do.

And so that's really the problem we're trying to solve.

And so this is a step towards solving the moral problem.

- One of the things that we've talked about repeatedly on this show is the housing affordability and how it's become more and more out of reach since COVID-19, when we had a mass influx of residents come in from out of state and help drive up the prices of homes that were being sold.

And our property taxes are based on the sale price.

So the money has been going up all of these years, the revenue that municipalities and cities have been receiving.

Um, how do we look at that and how this might, this might help to make things more fair.

Or how do you see this?

Because none of you have really talked about the fact that the revenues have been much higher since 2020.

- If I can jump in, I'm glad you brought that up because as you know, I just finished a campaign.

So I did a lot of research since 2022.

St.

Pete has seen a 45% increase in revenue, 35% in utility rates, and at the same period of time was a 19% inflation.

So and when you look around, when you drive around, where did the money go?

It's just not apparent.

And that's back to what I was saying about the administration needs to needs to be transparent so these voters can have a good idea of how it affects them because it is going to affect communities different.

So how does it affect a person in St.

Pete and how do they make their decision?

Because you hit it right on the head.

The revenues have continued to go up.

And when you talk about an influx of people.

St.

Pete's only grown by about 8800 people in the last ten years.

But when you drive the streets, you think it's grown tremendously more.

The traffic is terrible.

You know, all these buildings going up.

But we've actually lost some population after Helene and Milton, especially in the beach communities.

They lost it, so there's a lot of factors there that that, you know, the net result is not clear.

- And the big cities and the metropolitan areas are very different from the rural communities that really depend heavily on their property taxes.

It's interesting to me, though, that one of the sponsors of this is Representative Toby Overdorf.

He is from and covers Martin, St.

Lucie counties.

Stuart, I mean, this is not an area that has much to gain from this.

In fact, they are one of these communities that would be affected.

And yet he feels that local governments can make necessary cuts and maintain the services.

How do you think.

- The governor has admitted this is going to bankrupt some counties?

It's going to definitely bankrupt some cities.

And he said, hey, we need a trust fund to backfill them, which basically means he's going to make them permanent dependence on the state.

And that's another issue that I have a problem with.

The governor is now going to find himself being the mayor of 27...27 cities and counties across the state of Florida, because he's ultimately writing their budgets and having to backfill them every year.

- Well, we thank you for coming in and sharing your perspectives with us.

There are no easy answers, so we really value the fact that each of you have presented your positions and really given our viewers a lot to think about.

So thank you again.

Thanks to Jake Hoffman, Jeff Brandes, and Jim Large.

Before we go, a few dates for Florida voters.

Early voting begins on October the 19th and most local counties, and it runs through November the 1st.

Check with your Supervisor of Elections office for exact dates, locations and hours for the early voting.

Election day, of course, is on Tuesday, November the 3rd.

We know you've got plenty of choices for your news and information, and we thank you for choosing us.

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