Letter: Vote No on Amendment 2

As a Florida resident, homeowner and taxpayer I read your May 20th article on upcoming Property Tax constitutional amendments with great interest. Thank you for taking the time to write about this very important issue that I am afraid is getting lost in the constitutional amendment traffic on this year’s General Election ballot.

Amendment 1 (an additional $25,000 homestead exemption) would benefit many taxpayers who have a Homestead Exemption and for that reason alone is likely to pass. This will create an almost immediate 600 Million loss of taxes statewide, something the State of Florida hasn’t experience in quite some time.

This leads me to Amendment 2 (makes permanent 10% cap on Non-Homestead properties). Jesse Dunn, director of management and budget for St. Johns County, recently called Amendment 2 "its own monster“, saying that it would be hard even to quantify the effect of extending the cap into perpetuity at this point, and going on to say that the county has already been living with the cap for the last 10 years and called its effects on revenues "absolutely significant“.

A careful reading of the language of this misleading amendment reflects that Amendment 2 benefits Non-Homestead property owners to the tune of almost 1.2 Billion dollars annually, and this corporate welfare is being given to some of our largest commercial properties owners in the state, including owners of oceanfront hotels, mega malls and high rise buildings. All while our residents are left holding the bag. Mr. Dunn was quoted as saying "measures such as staff reductions, furloughs, freezes on merit and cost of living raises, reductions to service and deferred maintenance that the county had to resort to 10 years ago could be back on the table“.

Floridians should protect our local governments and our first responders by VOTING NO ON AMENDMENT 2.

Travis W. Moore

St. Petersburg