As Gov. Ron DeSantis pushes a proposal that could eventually eliminate property taxes on homesteaded properties, St. Petersburg officials are beginning to raise a question that extends far beyond tax relief:
How does a city continue providing services when one of its largest revenue streams disappears?
During Thursday’s City Council meeting, members approved a resolution urging the Florida Legislature to carefully consider the impacts of property tax reform before moving forward with the governor’s plan, titled “Save Our Homes from Excessive Property Taxes.”
The proposal, which will be considered during a special legislative session this week, would immediately increase Florida’s homestead exemption from $50,000 to $250,000 while creating a pathway toward the eventual elimination of property taxes on homesteaded properties.
For many homeowners, the proposal sounds straightforward: lower tax bills. For local governments, the math is considerably more complicated.
“What we pay for with our real estate property taxes is police and fire and it doesn’t cover everything,” Councilmember Lisset Hanewicz said during Thursday’s discussion. “Think about taking a $70 million hit; that money is going to have to come from somewhere.”
The comment reflected a concern repeatedly voiced throughout the meeting: eliminating a major source of local revenue does not eliminate the cost of providing local services.
In St. Petersburg, property taxes help fund much of the city’s day-to-day operations, including police and fire protection, road maintenance, parks, libraries, code enforcement and administrative services. They also support major infrastructure investments, including stormwater improvements and resiliency projects that have become increasingly important following Hurricanes Helene and Milton.
Those concerns are particularly acute in a city that has spent the past several years investing heavily in flood mitigation and climate resilience.
St. Petersburg currently has hundreds of millions of dollars in resiliency projects either underway or planned, including stormwater upgrades, drainage improvements, seawall repairs and neighborhood flood reduction efforts. Much of that work depends on local revenues that city leaders fear could become harder to replace if property tax collections decline substantially.
Vice Chair Richie Floyd argued the proposal risks creating a fiscal hole that local governments would eventually be forced to fill elsewhere.
“Property taxes are a wealth tax that impact people with more wealth and that’s who the state legislature answers to, unfortunately,” Floyd said. “There isn’t going to be a magic wand we can wave to not have to cut services if this goes through. We will feel a serious crunch.”
The discussion comes as DeSantis and state officials have spent months arguing that local governments have become overly dependent on property tax revenues.
According to the governor’s office, local government property tax collections have nearly doubled over the past seven years, increasing from roughly $32 billion to $60 billion statewide. Those collections are projected to reach $83 billion by 2032 if current trends continue.
DeSantis has framed the proposal as both homeowner relief and a way to force local governments into greater fiscal discipline.
The proposal would also require remaining property tax revenues to be spent only on core services such as public safety, schools, infrastructure and natural resources. It would create a state trust fund intended to help local governments maintain essential services if revenues decline.
But several council members questioned whether any state backfill mechanism could realistically replace the scale of revenue cities currently receive through property taxes.
The debate arrives as St. Petersburg’s millage rate has remained relatively stable in recent years despite rising property tax collections. City officials have frequently noted that much of the increase stems from escalating home values and new development rather than dramatic increases in the tax rate itself.
That distinction has become central to critics of the governor’s proposal, who argue that soaring housing prices, not local government spending, are the primary reason homeowners are paying more.
For now, the Legislature will have the final say on whether the proposal advances to voters.
But Thursday’s discussion offered an early glimpse of what may become one of the defining local debates surrounding the governor’s plan: whether Floridians can substantially reduce property taxes without fundamentally reshaping the services cities provide.
