A walk-through of the tradeoffs on the November 3, 2026 ballot
Here's the shortest, honest version: Amendment 3 asks Florida voters whether to trade a bigger property tax break for homeowners against a real cut to the money cities and counties use to run themselves. Everything else is detail on that trade. As an elected official we are ethically bound not to advocate for either position, but to remain neutral in public advocacy. Our role is merely to educate on known impacts of the legislation.
If it passes with the required 60% supermajority, the homestead exemption for non-school taxes jumps from today's $50,000 to $150,000 starting January 1, 2027, then to $250,000 in 2028, with inflation adjustments kicking in after that. Separately, the annual cap on how much a non-homestead property's assessed value can rise each year drops from 10% to 5%, good news if you own a rental or a second home and have watched your assessment climb. People who move to Florida after the end of 2026 would phase into the bigger exemption over five years rather than getting it immediately. And buried in the text is a requirement that the legislature eventually write a schedule for phasing out homestead property taxes on non-school levies altogether with no deadline attached and no replacement revenue named.
The case for it is straightforward and the people making it are straightforward too. Homeowners keep more of their own money, which matters more than usual right now given how much housing costs have climbed. The Florida GOP has backed it on exactly those grounds, and the Florida Realtors have put money (around $10 million) behind the campaign to pass it. Some property appraisers, like Miami-Dade's Tomas Regalado, argue local governments can simply get leaner and more efficient to absorb the loss rather than gutting anything essential.
A number of Public Safety groups have come out in opposition to the amendment such as Florida Fire Chiefs’ Association, the first major statewide public safety group to formally oppose it. Florida State Fraternal Order of Police, which supports tax relief in general but says the amendment creates “far too much uncertainty” about how police, fire and emergency medical services would be paid for. Florida Sheriffs Association, Florida Professional Firefighters, and the Florida Fire Marshals and Inspectors Association have also opposed the amendment.
The case against it comes mostly from the people who would have to make the budget actually work afterward. State economists put the hit to local government revenue at roughly $5 billion in year one, climbing toward $11.8–12 billion a year within about five years and that money currently pays for the parts of city government people notice most when they're gone: police response times, fire crews, EMS.
That is where the Florida League of Cities comes in, and it is worth knowing they are not a neutral referee here as they represent municipal governments, and their whole property-tax page is built to argue the "no" case. Although I serve on the Florida League and Space Coast League of Cities in a number of roles, I am still required to be neutral in my advocacy. But the numbers they cite are specific enough to take seriously. Citing a Wichita State/FIU study, they point out that public safety spending already eats up roughly 90% of property tax revenue in many smaller Florida cities. In at least 176 cities, police, fire, and EMS costs already exceed the entire property tax haul. And at the full $250,000 exemption, they estimate 85 of those cities could not fund public safety at current levels even if they zeroed out every other property-tax-funded service such as parks, libraries and roads, all of it. They also cite reporting that firefighter groups have warned cuts could reach 25%. Currently the ad valorem revenue projected by Cape Canaveral does not cover the costs of our fire and police protection. Our city projects $6,718,733 in property tax revenue, of that amount, $1,851,531 would be transferred to the CRA, leaving a net left-over amount of $4,867,202 in the General Fund with a cost of fire and police protection at $7,318,558.
The League's broader argument is that this isn’t really a tax cut so much as a tax shift. When the exemption drains a city's budget, the money doesn't just disappear from the world, it tends to reappear as new fees and higher millage rates on the properties that didn't get the break, or higher rents as landlords pass costs along. Miami-Dade's mayor has made a version of this same point locally, warning the county would have to cut services directly. Environmental groups add a hurricane-season angle: less local revenue could mean fewer resources for storm hardening seawalls and tree trimming - the unglamorous stuff that matters most when a storm hits.
There's also a structural piece worth knowing about even if it's less visible than the dollar figures: the amendment would constitutionally restrict how counties and cities can spend whatever property tax revenue they have left, limiting it to specific categories like public safety, schools, infrastructure, and debt service. Supporters frame that as accountability. The League of Cities frames it as one more constraint on local governments' ability to respond to their own circumstances.
It is worth noting that the ballot language itself has already been through a legal fight. A Leon County judge ruled in August that the original title "Save Our Homes from Excessive Property Taxes" was biased and read like a campaign slogan rather than a neutral description and ordered it rewritten. The amendment stayed on the ballot; only the wording changed to the more clinical "Increased Homestead Exemption, Lower Cap on Increases in Non-Homestead Property Assessments."
So, the honest summary is a real tradeoff, not a free lunch on either side: homeowners very likely save real money if this passes, and local governments very likely have to cut something, raise something else, or both to make up the difference. Which side of that trade matters more to you depends on whether you are thinking primarily about your own tax bill or about the services your city provides and reasonable people land in different places on that question.