Florida’s controversial property tax ballot measure could offer tax relief to homeowners, but the amendment’s critics warn that public services are at risk, including public libraries.
With midterm elections nearly a month away, Gainesville officials and advocates are voicing their concern. The amendment, if passed, could dramatically reduce property taxes for homeowners in years to come, but cities and counties told lawmakers in Tallahassee, who approved the measure, that lost revenues could pose peril for local programs and services.
This is especially true for The Alachua County Library District, which is an independent special library district. That means it’s “almost totally dependent on the property tax base revenues for both operating and capital expenditures,” the district’s 2025-26 annual budget read.
The county library district declined to comment on the ballot measure, also known as Amendment 3. However, local officials and advocates in Gainesville, like Mayor Harvey Ward, expressed disappointment with the amendment, calling it “sloppy legislation.”
“The only thing they’re selling is ‘You’re going to save money,’ but they don’t want to tell you what it’s going to cost,” Ward said. “You know why? Because they don’t know.”
Under the property tax measure, he expects that the local library headquarters will have to reduce its hours, while satellite branches like Tower Road and High Springs will likely close due to reduced funding.
Ward said that libraries do not have stores of money they can spend in emergency situations. Instead, they spend money as it comes in on personnel, materials and events.
“Now we’re going to tell people, ‘Story time is over, don’t bother bringing your kids to the library,’” Ward said.
For local advocates like Donna Waller, president of the League of Women Voters Alachua County, the amendment poses a direct threat to local governmental independence.
Waller said the organization opposes the decision to put this measure on the ballot rather than having it go through the Florida House of Representatives and Senate in the annual legislative session. She noted the group isn’t opposed to property tax relief, but would have supported a long-term plan to reduce property taxes.
Additionally, she said the organization is also concerned that this ballot measure could impede home rule charters, which give local governments authority without needing approval from the state.
“That's deliberate on the part of the legislature, because what they want to do is take away power from the local governments and put it in Tallahassee,” Waller said.
She is critical of the amendment’s list detailing what local governments can spend money on, including “public safety, education and schools, infrastructure, natural resources, bond debt service, retirement benefits for employees, and operations and administration.”
Arts, recreation and public health are omitted from this list, Waller said. She’s especially concerned about what could happen to libraries in the county if they are forced to adjust to a reduced budget.
“The real purpose of it seems to me to take away local community spirit and autonomy,” Waller said.
The amendment’s impact on libraries is especially worrying for Stephana Ferrell, director of research and insight at the Florida Freedom to Read Project. She emphasized the importance of giving children easy access to literature. Alternatives like little free libraries are important, but do not replace the role of libraries.
“There are so many things going on in our kids' lives that pull their attention in a million different places, and so when they express an interest in seeking out and reading a book, the library offers them an immediate way to access that book,” she said.
The amendment’s proponents argue that public services can adjust their budgets if the property tax reduction passes, but Ferrell points to the impacts local services are already facing, including staffing cuts at libraries and limited access to e-books.
Like Waller, she worries about power being increasingly centralized in the state government.
“When they do this, they know that they are taking away local power and local control, and they are weakening our voice and our influence and our power in our communities, and that's something that we shouldn't be so dismissive of and willing to put at risk,” Ferrell said.