Here’s an Amendment 3 question we aren’t asking enough: What happens to your home’s value when the community around it slowly deteriorates? Cities facing significant revenue losses won’t eliminate police and fire overnight. They may trim staffing, stretch response times, reduce library hours, close recreation centers, defer road maintenance and take longer to fill potholes. It won’t happen overnight. It’ll happen one budget at a time. And it won’t happen evenly. Two nearly identical homes ten minutes apart could eventually have very different values because one community maintained its services while another struggled. People don’t just buy houses. They buy neighborhoods. Safety, roads, parks, libraries and quality of life all have economic value. This isn’t just theoretical. A peer-reviewed study examining more than 3 million Florida home sales found that access to police, fire and emergency medical services is reflected in property values. onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/… Some communities will cut services. Others will raise fees or find efficiencies. The outcomes will vary. But here’s the question: How much property-tax savings would compensate you for declining services and potentially lower home values? Your property-tax bill tells you what local government costs. Your home’s value may tell you what those services are worth.

Nearly 1 in 3 Floridians rent. They don’t get the homestead exemption under Amendment 3. They may get the bill instead. Tax Foundation Senior Fellow Jared Walczak estimates that by 2028, if local governments raise rates to replace lost revenue, property taxes could increase roughly: • $406/year on the average apartment • $1,081/year on a rental house • $1,196/year on an owner-occupied property without a homestead exemption Those costs don’t just disappear. Over time, much of them gets passed on to renters. This is why you model a constitutional amendment BEFORE you put it on the ballot. You can call Amendment 3 a tax cut, but if you lower one person’s bill and shift the cost onto somebody else, you didn’t eliminate the tax. You changed who pays it.

Florida has 411 cities, towns and villages. Roughly 60% have fewer than 10,000 residents. The median Florida municipality has about 6,500 people. That raises a question Florida has not seriously considered: What is the minimum viable city? As Amendment 3 approaches, local governments are answering it in real time through fire assessments, EMS fees, garbage fees, stormwater fees, park fees, parking charges, fuel taxes and public service taxes. The property tax bill may shrink, but the receipt grows longer. Every city has fixed costs that remain when property-tax revenue falls: police and fire, roads and stormwater, pensions, debt, insurance, buildings, technology and basic administration. Scale matters. A city of 5,000 still needs many basic functions of a city of 100,000, yet has far fewer taxpayers to share the costs. When the math stops working, cities first raise fees, then create assessments, then cut services, then contract them to the county or a neighboring city. Eventually comes the question no one wants to ask: Does this city still make economic sense as an independent government? Florida’s municipalities range from its largest cities to places like Marineland, with only a handful of residents. Yet Amendment 3 applies essentially the same constitutional formula to all of them. Some cities will adapt. Some will raise fees. Some will cut services. Some will increasingly rely on their counties. And some may ultimately consolidate or disincorporate. Florida may need a Minimum Viable City stress test: taxable value per resident, homestead concentration, infrastructure age, debt and pension obligations, fixed costs and projected Amendment 3 losses. When six out of ten Florida municipalities have fewer than 10,000 residents, this is not a fringe issue. It is structural. If we permanently change the economics of local government, we should first understand what makes a municipality financially viable. Florida should not discover the minimum viable city by waiting for the first ones to fail and watching their obligations, services and costs spill across borders to everyone else.

This constitutional amendment is quickly becoming an orphan. The Governor has walked away. You can’t find legislators willing to defend it or even explain how it works. Sheriffs, local police and firefighters across Florida are raising concerns about its consequences. And the polling is clear: the more voters understand what’s actually in the amendment, the less they support it. If it fails, I don’t see that as the end of the conversation. I see it as the beginning. Florida’s property tax system deserves thoughtful, transparent reform…something the next governor and Legislature can tackle through sound policy, honest debate, and a process that brings people together instead of dividing them. Reform is needed. This amendment isn’t it.