TEMPLE TERRACE — The water will keep running, and the garbage will still get picked up. The police and fire will still answer calls.
That much Temple Terrace Mayor Andy Ross expects.
As for the fireworks, the parades, the festivals and services like the library?
Those might be another story.
Florida voters approved Amendment 3 on Nov. 3, giving homeowners a big property tax break. But Ross said that break could come at a cost, and lessening the blow won’t be as easy as the city simply tightening its belt and carrying on as usual.
“We do not have 20% slack,” Ross said the day after the election.
That’s approximately how much of its property tax revenue Temple Terrace expects to lose once the amendment is fully implemented, about $4 million annually. The city estimates the shortfall will begin at $2.6 million in fiscal 2028 before growing to $4 million the following year.
And the mayor said the city will be considering all options to make up for the loss.
“I don’t know if we’ll be able to do it without laying people off,” he said.
Gov. Ron DeSantis, who spearheaded the amendment, disputes that it will shift the tax burden elsewhere.
“They said it would be a tax shift; it’s not going to be a tax shift, it’s going to be a reduction,” DeSantis said after the election.
To keep it that way, DeSantis has proposed a special session before the end of the year to pass a taxpayer’s bill of rights that would prevent local governments from raising other taxes to offset revenue lost under Amendment 3.
Ross isn’t so sure the math works. He expects the city will have to find some combination of spending cuts and higher taxes or fees to make up the difference, though the governor’s proposal could limit how much of that comes from new revenue.
Florida voters approved the measure with 62% of the vote, two points more than the 60% required. It raises the non-school homestead exemption from $50,000 to $150,000 in 2027, and to $250,000 in 2028.
For homeowners, that means significant savings. Some could see their non-school property taxes disappear entirely.
For Temple Terrace, it means trying to figure out how to keep the levels of service high with less money.
The good news, for now, is that nothing changes immediately.
The city’s fiscal budget for 2027 is already in place, so there won’t be any effects until this time next year. Ross expects some difficult conversations when the council starts working on the budget in the spring.
And while he expects essential services to continue, some of the things that make Temple Terrace, well, Temple Terrace, could be in jeopardy.
“I don’t know if we’ll have fireworks and parades and festivals,” Ross said. “I mean, I’m sure we will. I don’t know if we’ll have them to the same degree.”
Ross also thinks services like the library and the city’s rec centers could feel the pinch. Cutting hours or charging more was already an idea floated at a meeting a few months back when the amendment’s possible passage was discussed.
“Those are the things you look at first,” he said.
Ross knows some residents, and many proponents of the amendment, believe government has plenty of waste to cut. And he doesn’t pretend Temple Terrace operates with perfect efficiency.
“Do we have inefficiencies? I’m sure we do,” he said. “That would be foolish of me to pretend that there’s not inefficiencies in our operation, just like there are in every operation.”
But he says what constitutes waste can be subjective. Ross used the example of replacing a four-year-old treadmill at the city’s rec center.
Someone reviewing the budget might consider that an unnecessary expense. Someone who uses the gym regularly might see it as one of the reasons they enjoy living in Temple Terrace. “Depending on how you define waste, you will find waste,” Ross said.
And the city’s expenses aren’t getting cheaper thanks to inflation.
Ross said police vehicles that once cost $40,000 now cost $60,000. Fire trucks can cost $1 million, and ambulances that once cost less than $300,000 now cost about $500,000.
“Everything that you buy at home that’s gone up, it’s gone up for us too,” he said.
The looming shortfall also comes as Temple Terrace is prepping a major public safety investment.
In August, voters approved a $50 million general obligation bond to build a new police headquarters and a third fire station on Harney Road.
At the time, the vote was a big victory for the city, which had been seeking more police and fire space for decades. But officials also said they would wait until after the November election before issuing the bonds, knowing that the Amendment 3 vote was on the horizon and could alter the plans.
Ross supports property tax reform and believes there are good reasons to consider it. But he thinks the Legislature should have put more consideration into the long-term consequences.
“It was sloppy and poor legislation,” he said. “They put lousy, ill-thought-out legislation on the ballot.”
He said he had hoped the amendment would fail, which would have forced legislators to revisit the issue in a better way.
Instead, Ross said he fears the financial problems will only grow with inflation and the rising costs of providing city services.
“The divide just keeps getting wider and wider and wider every single year,” he said, “until at some point they’re either going to have to change it or cities are going to go bankrupt.”