Brevard County officials cast a wary eye last week at a proposed amendment to the Florida Constitution that would cut property taxes for about 72,000 homeowners in the county in 2019 – possibly at the expense of some 184,000 businesses and part-time homeowners.
“So 78 percent of the property owners could pay an increase so 22 percent get a decrease?” County Commissioner Jim Barfield of Merritt Island asked. “I don’t know why we’d want that.”
Commissioners would have no choice, however, if Florida voters in November approve Amendment 1, changing Section 6(a) of Article 7 of Florida’s Constitution and ushering in what would be a third $25,000 homestead exemption.
Homeowners already have an exemption on the first $25,000 in value, plus an additional exemption on any value between $50,000 and $75,000.
The new proposal, if approved by 60 percent of voters, would cut $25,000 from taxable value in excess of $100,000 by exempting the $25,000 between $100,000 and $125,000 of value. Homes with assessed values of less than $100,000 would be unaffected by the Amendment 1 exemption. Homes valued at more than $100,000 but less than $125,000 on the tax rolls would not benefit from the entire $25,000 exemption.
And the reduction in taxable property value would mean a loss of $12 million from county revenue, County Manager Frank Abbate said Thursday in a workshop.
He broke down the $12 million loss to include $7.28 million from the general countywide fund, plus about $1 million from law enforcement; $873,000 from libraries; $783,000 from recreation; $699,000 from fire control; $345,000 from mosquito control; $317,000 from roads and bridges; and $108,000 from environmentally endangered lands.
The losses would leave county staffers wrestling to cut that much from the budget that would start in October 2019, Abbate said, or force commissioners to increase the tax rate on commercial properties and others that don’t get homestead exemptions.
“It’s going to be tough to find that extra $12 million,” commission Chairwoman Rita Pritchett said.
At one point, Barfield passed his colleagues a spreadsheet he prepared, showing his Merritt Island home, assessed at $243,600 in 2016, with a taxable value of $193,600 then but a $143,600 value under the new exemption.
Barfield calculated his $3,185 in various county taxes from 2016 would drop to $2,753 under the new exemption – for a savings of $432.
But he questioned what he’d have to give up for the savings, what the loss of $12 million would do to services the county provides. Abbate said his staff hasn’t compared those losses yet.
“It’s still two years down the line,” Abbate said.
County taxpayers this year were calculated to pay $230.4 million toward the county’s $1.2 billion budget, records show. Commissioners last fall approved a composite tax rate of $6.33 per every $1,000 of taxable property value.
Starting in June, when Property Appraiser Dana Blickley issues an estimated value of the county’s new property value, including new construction, county staffers will start the process of calculating the potential tax income for the fiscal year that starts Oct. 1.
Commissioner Curt Smith of Viera said the county’s main task until November will be to educate voters about the lesser-known effects of the new proposed exemption.
