You Can't Silence Us

It seems that not a day goes by without another locality telling us how they are broke and plan to raise taxes. Yesterday, I told you about the seemingly coordinated social media campaign against Amendment 3. I am going to keep beating this drum, because it’s important.

Cape Canaveral has been discussed on this page before. As I said then: The city of Cape Canaveral in Brevard County has a population of about 10,000 people and encompasses about 2 square miles. In the year 2000, population in the city was about 8,900 people, and it was about 8,000 people in 1990. That’s a growth rate of 0.5% per year over the past 36 years. In 2015, the city spent an amount nearly the same as its entire annual budget building a new city hall, even though it couldn’t even afford a police force.

This city has a population of only 10,000 people, but an annual budget of 40 million and no police department.

and they are broke. They have been running budget deficits for so long, they have spent all of their reserve funds.

They have been spending more than they take in for DECADES. This coming year, they have a $4 million budget shortfall. Rather than rein in out of control spending, this city is considering TRIPLING their tax rate to 10 mils at their September 15 meeting.

The current municipal property tax rate (millage rate) for the City of Cape Canaveral is 3.1429 mils. A family that lives in a modest $250,000 home would be paying $1400 more in taxes next year if this passes. In Florida, your total property tax bill stacks multiple authorities together: Brevard County Public Schools (~6.31 mils), Brevard County Commission (~2.86 mils), and other special water and navigation districts (~0.80 mils), plus the proposed 10 mils for Cape Canaveral would raise that family’s new tax bill from $2,635.65 per year for 2026 to $4,007.08 per year in 2027.

That’s why it’s important to take care of this. Since the local government’s can’t control their spending, the taxpayers need to do it for them.

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.