{"id":419061,"date":"2026-10-05T09:34:36","date_gmt":"2026-10-05T09:34:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/419061\/"},"modified":"2026-10-05T09:34:36","modified_gmt":"2026-10-05T09:34:36","slug":"amendment-3-impact-orange-county-leaders-discuss-concerns","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/419061\/","title":{"rendered":"Amendment 3 impact: Orange County leaders discuss concerns"},"content":{"rendered":"

Amendment 3 impact: Orange County leaders discuss concerns over proposed property tax cut<\/p>\n

\"Bob<\/a>ORANGE COUNTY, Fla. \u2014<\/p>\n

A panel of Orange County leaders warned that if voters approve a massive property tax cut in November, local governments would change dramatically.<\/p>\n

\u201cTo me, it’s defunding. It really is defunding law enforcement,\u201d Orange County Sheriff John Mina said. \u201cEven if the mayor and county commissioners say, \u2018Sheriff, we\u2019re not going to cut. We\u2019re just going to leave your budget the same.\u2019 In essence, to me, that is a cut, because I\u2019m going to need another 25 or 50 deputies.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mina served on a panel organized by the Orlando Economic Partnership to discuss the impact of Amendment 3. It would increase the property tax exemption on homesteaded properties to $150,000 in the first year and $250,000 in the second year. In 2029, that amount would begin being indexed to inflation.<\/p>\n

For many counties and cities, that increased exemption will mean hundreds of millions of dollars in lost revenue.<\/p>\n

Orange County Tax Collector Scott Randolph said many small, predominantly residential cities would have to dissolve or consolidate.<\/p>\n

\u201cBelle Isle, Edgewood, Windermere, they\u2019re gone,\u201d Randolph said.<\/p>\n

Former Republican state Senator Jeff Brandes said he believes at least 50 cities would disappear because they couldn\u2019t afford to continue providing services, including law enforcement.<\/p>\n

He also predicted that many municipalities would need to increase fees and other non-ad valorem revenue sources to make up for the lost property tax money. In some cases, that would mean longtime homeowners would end up paying more to their local governments.<\/p>\n

Brandes said counties would also be looking to bring in more commercial development, including potentially data centers.<\/p>\n

\u201cLiberty County has $ 1.1 billion in total taxable value. They build a billion-dollar data center, they double the taxable value of the entire county,\u201d Brandes said. \u201cThe best thing that could happen to data centers could be Amendment 3 in rural districts.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Amendment 3 impact: Orange County leaders discuss concerns over proposed property tax cut ORANGE COUNTY, Fla. \u2014 A…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":419062,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[17907,165648,187,1896,1290,102075,3882,5033,1598,16665,72583,139,141,140,16851,78478,121610,165649],"class_list":["post-419061","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-orlando","tag-amendment","tag-brandes","tag-city","tag-concern","tag-county-commissioner","tag-datum-center","tag-edgewood","tag-impact","tag-law-enforcement","tag-local-government","tag-orange-county-leader","tag-orlando","tag-orlando-headlines","tag-orlando-news","tag-panel","tag-property-tax-cut","tag-property-tax-exemption","tag-total-taxable-value"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/419061","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=419061"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/419061\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/419062"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=419061"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=419061"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=419061"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}