Fort Lauderdale, FL September 29, 2026 --(PR.com)-- New Free Tool Puts a Number on Amendment 3 for Florida Homeowners and the Local Governments That Serve Them
PropertyTaxImpact.com, built by Fort Lauderdale resilience firm Brizaga, calculates the amendment's effect address by address and government by government from public tax rolls and published budgets.
Brizaga, a civil and coastal engineering and adaptation consulting firm, has launched PropertyTaxImpact.com. The free public tool shows what Florida's proposed Amendment 3 would mean for individual homeowners' property tax bills and for the city and county budgets those taxes support. The site now has all 67 counties live. It lets any resident look up the amendment's effect on their own property and on the governments that serve them. Every figure comes from public property records and adopted budgets, not statewide estimates.
Amendment 3 will be on Florida's ballot on November 3, 2026. It would raise the homestead exemption on non-school property taxes to the first $250,000 of assessed value by 2028. That would lower tax bills for homesteaded properties and reduce what cities and counties collect.
"Amendment 3 has been debated mostly in talking points. Supporters call it a tax cut and opponents call it a budget hole, and both are true," said Alec Bogdanoff, Ph.D., co-founder and CEO of Brizaga. "Neither one tells a homeowner what it means for their bill, or tells a resident what it means for the city that picks up their trash and answers their 911 calls. We built the tool we wished existed, and we're making it free for anyone to use."
How the Tool Works
Residents pick their county and enter an address. The tool pulls the parcel's assessed value directly from the county property appraiser's roll, so there's nothing to estimate or type in. It shows what Amendment 3 would save that homeowner next to what it would cost the city and county governments that serve the property. Residents who would rather not enter an address can go straight to any city or county page and see the same government-level figures.
Each jurisdiction page presents the loss the same way:
• The estimated dollar impact for 2027 and 2028
• The share of that government's General Fund the loss represents
• A line-by-line breakdown of the General Fund, largest items first, so residents can see what the property tax actually pays for
Some pages carry a Verified mark. It means that the government's finance office checked Brizaga's budget figures against what it reported to the state and confirmed they match. Each government was sent its own figures and invited to review them.
What the Numbers Show
The effect of Amendment 3 is uneven. How much a government loses depends mostly on how much of its tax base is homesteaded and how heavily its budget relies on property tax. Brizaga's first release covered 158 city and county governments in seven counties. Their first-year (2027) figures include:
• Broward County: the county government loses an estimated $192.6 million in 2027 and $333.5 million in 2028. Its 32 city and county governments together lose $401.9 million in the first year. Five Broward cities (Tamarac, Lauderdale Lakes, West Park, Margate and North Lauderdale) could not recover the loss even by raising their millage to the state's 10-mill ceiling.
- Miami-Dade County: 35 local governments lose $277.3 million in the first year.
- Palm Beach County: 40 local governments lose $221.8 million in the first year. The county government loses $384.3 million across 2027 and 2028 combined. The Village of Westlake loses 58.4% of its General Fund, the steepest share of the 158 governments in the first seven counties.
Hillsborough and Pinellas counties: 29 local governments lose $348.7 million in the first year.
• Orange and Seminole counties: 22 local governments lose $203.1 million in the first year. Seminole County's government loses 22.3% of its General Fund, the steepest share of the seven county governments first analyzed.
Built from Public Records and Checked Against Independent Estimates
Every figure on the site traces back to a public source:
• Each county's 2026 preliminary tax roll, from the Florida Department of Revenue and the county property appraiser
• Adopted millage rates
• Local governments audited financial statements and budget filings reported to the state
Brizaga calculates the tax change for every homesteaded parcel individually and rolls those changes up to the city and county level. It then measures each total against the General Fund that property taxes support.
Before running the model on this year's numbers, Brizaga calibrated it against certified tax rolls. It reproduced certified countywide totals to within 0.4% and every individual city to within 2%.
Where local officials have published their own estimates, Brizaga's independently built figures land close to them:
• Broward County Property Appraiser: estimated the county's second-year loss at $333.8 million. Brizaga's model: $333,496,014, a 0.09% difference.
• City of Tampa: estimated "more than $35 million" in fiscal 2028. Brizaga's model: $34.7 million.
• Palm Beach County administration: estimated "nearly $400 million" over two years. Brizaga's model: $384.3 million.
"We didn't tune the model to anyone's estimate. In most cases we didn't know those figures until after our numbers were done," said Michael Antinelli, PE, CFM, co-founder and COO of Brizaga. "The value of building it parcel by parcel is that any finance director can check our work against their own books, and several already have."
Why a Resilience Firm Built a Tax Calculator
Brizaga's work centers on resilience: how a community handles shocks and stressors, and whether it keeps functioning and recovers. That work usually involves storms, flooding and extreme heat. But a community's finances face shocks too, and Brizaga's team saw Amendment 3 as a clear example of one. No individual city or county chose it, yet each would have to absorb it. How hard it hits depends on how much of each government's budget rests on the tax it would reduce.
"Local governments fund stormwater, drainage, emergency management and public safety from the same General Fund this amendment would shrink," Antinelli said. "Whatever voters decide, residents and their elected officials should be making that decision with real numbers for their own community."
Nonpartisan by Design
Brizaga takes no position on Amendment 3 and does not advise anyone how to vote. The tool also doesn't predict what any government would cut or raise to close a gap. Those decisions belong to elected officials making them in public. The site is informational only and is not tax advice. A full Methodology page explains the data sources and what the model does and doesn't capture. Brizaga invites every government on the site to check its figures and submit corrections.
Journalists can ask for county-level datasets, walkthroughs of the method, or custom analyses from the model.
About Brizaga
Brizaga is a civil and coastal engineering and adaptation consulting firm headquartered in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, licensed in Florida, New York and New Jersey. Brizaga helps communities, governments and property owners plan for and adapt to flooding, sea level rise, storm surge and other hazards through vulnerability assessment, adaptation planning, engineering design and nature-based solutions.
Learn more at www.brizaga.com.
2101 W. Commercial Blvd., Suite 4600
Fort Lauderdale, FL 33309
www.brizaga.com
Media Contact: Alec Bogdanoff
Company: Brizaga
Email: contact@brizaga.com
Phone: (954) 834-3533 x101
Contact Information:
Brizaga
Alec Bogdanoff
954-834-3533
Contact via Email
www.brizaga.com
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