Taxes

All over Florida, the governments are coming out against Amendment 3, the one that will cut property taxes on homestead property taxes that aren’t for the school board. In its final form, the property taxes on a person’s primary residence that aren’t going to schools will be cut to zero for most people. That will translate to about a 15% cut in local and county tax revenues. The remainder of city and county taxes in Florida come from commercial property, second homes, and other sources.

That isn’t a large cut, when you consider that some counties are collecting 1.5 to 2 times as much in property taxes as they were a decade ago. So instead of collecting that, they will only get 1.3 to 1.7 as much as they were collecting. Oh, the humanity.

The tactic they are choosing is to say that services everyone wants will be cut, because of course they will. Everyone (or most everyone) wants police, fire, and schools funded. So they are rolling out threats of cutting those services. They are also already raising taxes in preparation for it passing. For example, the Osceola county school board is saying this cut will affect them (even though the law isn’t touching school taxes), so they are putting a millage rate increase on the ballot. They want to increase school taxes in Osceola county by $62 million. The school budget for that county is $2 billion, so this represents a 3% increase in the school’s budget, but an 18.8% increase in the school board’s current 5.3 mil tax. Then they go to the old “safety” excuse:

State law mandates that schools have at least one armed security officer during the school day. Osceola County schools are currently staffed by school resource officers through a cost-sharing partnership between the district and local municipalities — including the Osceola County Sheriff’s Office, St. Cloud Police Department and Kissimmee Police Department. Shanoff said that arrangement could be jeopardized if local governments face their own budget constraints, especially as voters statewide consider Amendment 3, which would overhaul state property taxes.

“If the municipalities run short of funds, the responsibility of staffing armed security at schools comes back to the school district, and we will have to go with private armed security, different than having actual law enforcement on campus,” Shanoff said.

That’s not what the law says. There is a provision to allow teachers to be armed, which wouldn’t cost a fraction of what it costs to maintain police on campus, but schools won’t do it even though they all receive grant money from the state to implement it. Osceola county is saving money by contracting the Guardian program to a private security company for armed, uniformed security guards, and using these security guards to replace armed police officers. Since the guards make significantly less money than cops, the school district is likely profiting from the program.

Osceola county governments are flush with cash. Kissimmee fire department recently gave their fire department 15% more time off by adding a fourth shift, but with the same pay. Just in February, that same fire department bought a new heavy rescue truck to replace the old one. That new truck cost more than a million dollars. Saint Cloud is spending $12.5 million on knocking down an old fire station to replace it with a new one, and another $10 million on another new station. St Cloud only has 108,000 residents, but has a $210 million annual budget, or more than $2000 a year for every man, woman, and child.

The local and city governments are flush with cash, and I am betting there is a lot of money being tossed at “social media influencers” to Astroturf support to prevent the gravy train from being cut.

I am deeply in favor of Amendment 3.

We keep hearing about how cutting Florida property taxes is going to cause cities and counties to cut the budgets of the vital services like police and fire. The police and fire unions have come out against the tax cuts, because of course they have. Let’s take a look at what that means.

In another installment of “government is spending money like a kid who found dad’s credit cards” we look at the Kissimmee Fire Department. Let’s take a look at their budget and see how money is being spent:

• In FY 2020-21, the department had a budget of $15.07 million and ran 13,500 calls (pdf warning)
• In FY 2021-22, the department had a budget of $16.57 million and ran 15,542 calls (pdf warning)
• In FY 2022-23, the department had a budget of $17.3 million and ran 15,041 calls (pdf warning)
• In FY 2023-24, the department had a budget of $19.9 million and ran 14,549 calls (pdf warning)

Then for the following fiscal year, the department’s budget ballooned to $24.71 million, despite the fact that they didn’t run an increased call volume, having run 14,837 calls, and then for the year after that, the budget climbed again to $31.2 million. So what changed that necessitated such a drastic increase in budget?

The difference between FY23-24 and FY25-26 is a 56% increase in the fire department’s budget in just two years. A big part of that is in staffing costs. The fire department went from a 3 shift model, where firefighters work 24 hours on and get 48 hours off, to a 4 shift model, where firefighters work 24 hours and get 72 hours off. Despite the fact that firefighters are working 25% less, they are being paid the same amount. This does absolutely nothing to increase the quality of service, but the firefighters get a lot more time off for the same money, so there is that. On an hourly basis, firefighters just received a 34% raise.

That’s not the only increase in costs. Administration costs climbed from $3.5 million to $5 million ( 42% increase) in the same time span. In short, the city is simply throwing money around to the detriment of the taxpayer. How did the city get the money? They raised taxes, of course.

These localities in Florida are spending money left and right. It’s time to rein in this ridiculous spending spree. Fire services can afford some cuts, and so can the rest of government.

Opponents of Florida’s ballot initiative to greatly cut property taxes, both Republicans and Democrats, have been scaremongering voters with predictions of the bad things that will happen once they aren’t stealing your money. The latest is telling parents how localities won’t be able to afford sponsoring summer camp, and this is bad because poor parents rely on summer camp as a free daycare program.

Why am I forced to pay for daycare for someone else’s crotch fruit? Get your sperms donor to pay his child support.

Let’s contrast this. Here is a leftist:

Now let’s compare that post to this one from a prominent Republican who is opposed to the elimination of Florida’s property taxes. Click on this link to read the entire conversation: (this was removed due to confusion between two similar sounding names.)

There is no functional difference between the Democrats and the Republicans. Both parties want to take your money. The only difference between the two is which set of cronies are the recipients of your tax dollars that they they return to the party in question. It’s all a big lie.

I’ve said this tons of times: just because Democrats are your enemy doesn’t mean that Republicans are your friend. I’m sick of both parties, as all they do is take my money and my freedom while telling me it’s for my own good, because they know how to spend my money better than I, but it always seems to benefit them more than it does me.

Party of small government and fiscal conservatism, my white ass. I may just return to my previous philosophy of “voting for the lesser of two evils is still voting for evil” and not vote for candidates of either party. I will, however, vote to cut taxes and strip the government of powers at every opportunity.

I won’t vote for a Democrat, but Republicans are going to have to earn my vote. Give me a reason to vote for you- don’t just talk about being small government, prove it.

The two most prolific opponents of cutting Florida property taxes I see on my feed are Jeff Brandes and Holly Bullard.

Holly Bullard is the chief strategy and development officer of the same institute. Her job is directing fundraising, policy advocacy, coalition building, outreach and communications strategies. She makes $110,000 per year.

Florida Policy Institute is a left of center NGO that specializes in collecting government grants, as far as I can tell. Their funding is part of a nearly impenetrable web of grants and untraceable funding. It appears to me as if it were another grift.

We keep being told how eliminating property taxes will mean roads, the fire department, and schools will be unfunded. They tell you so because everyone wants those services, but here is a great example of where property taxes go.

That’s right- Hillsboro county is going to use a billion dollars of taxpayer funds to build a new stadium for the Tamp Bay Rays. That works out to nearly $2,000 per household. They powers that be claim no one will notice, because the billion will come from county reserves. See, you won’t notice how we stole a bunch of money from you so we could pay a bunch of grown men a hundred million apiece to play a child’s game.

Incidentally, the team is worth $1.7 billion, but the taxpayers are expected to build half of the $2.8 billion stadium they will play in. How about instead, we let the taxpayers keep their money, and the team can charge what the traffic will bear for tickets instead of forcing taxpayers to fund your business?

EDITED TO ADD:

If the new field lasts as long as the old one, the stadium will cost $80 million for each year it’s used, or about $1 million per game. There are 25,000 seats in the stadium, meaning the team would have to add $40 to the price of each and every ticket to pay for the stadium themselves. That seems reasonable to me, and if people won’t pay it, then does Tampa really need baseball?

The standard argument about getting rid of property taxes is always “Who will pay for Fire Dept, Police, Schools, Roads?”

Even so, the proposed law would cut non-school ad valorem taxes for homestead property. Schools won’t be touched, as they are exempt. How about the other services?

Let’s use Daytona Beach as an example. You will see why I chose Daytona shortly. Daytona Beach has adopted a $379.8 million budget for the 2025-26 fiscal year (beginning Oct. 1, 2025), a 4.1% increase in property tax revenue driven by rising property values. The budget holds the millage rate at 5.9300 ($5.93 per $1,000 of taxable value). About a third of the city budget is from ad valorem (property) taxes. However, only a third of ad valorem taxes are from homestead property. The vast majority of property taxes are paid on commercial property like hotels, stores, and rental property. Overall, the loss of homestead ad valorem taxes would only cut city revenues by about 12%.

In Daytona, police and fire take up 55%, roads are about 15%, and schools take up 0% of the city budget. That means expenses that aren’t fire dept, police, schools, or roads comprise 30% of the city budget. In other words, the 70% of the budget for the police, fire, schools, and roads wouldn’t be touched if property taxes on owner occupied homes.

Especially if you consider that those departments are filled with waste, fraud, and corruption. One firefighter in Daytona blew the whistle on the department cooking the books and wasting damned near a million bucks a year. What did he get for his efforts? He was terminated. What’s going to happen there is he will sue the county and will likely get a huge paycheck because it is illegal to take action against a whistleblower. Somehow, my tax dollars will pay for the corruption, and will also pay for the lawsuits resulting from that corruption.