St. Johns County will hold a town hall on Amendment 3 at 6:30 Tuesday evening in the county auditorium, 500 San Sebastian View. It runs to 8. Written questions close at 5 p.m. Monday, through a form on the county’s own Amendment 3 page, and the county says the ones it does not get to will be answered and posted there afterward.

County Administrator Joy Andrews will lead it. Wade Schroeder, the county’s Office of Management and Budget director, is down to present the financial side. It will be carried on GovTV, Facebook and YouTube.

That is the meeting. Here is the arithmetic it is about.

The five-row table

The county’s page carries an estimate of its own property tax revenue for the coming fiscal year at $426 million. Under it sits a table of five rows, headed with the state agency that produced them, the Florida Office of Economic and Demographic Research.

Fiscal year Estimated property tax loss Percent loss over fiscal year 2027
2028 $68.3 Million 16%
2029 $136.10 Million 32%
2030 $152.50 Million 36%
2031 $171.20 Million 40%
2032 $191.60 Million 45%

Those are the county’s numbers as the county prints them.

Further down the same page is a second chart, headed FY 2027 Adopted Property Tax Allocation, giving nine shares that add to 100. The Sheriff’s Office is 31 percent, described as law enforcement and jail operations. Fire Rescue and Emergency Services is 27. Roads and Transportation is 13. Parks, Recreation and Libraries is 7, County Buildings and Technology is 7, General Government is 5, Constitutional Offices is 5, Health and Human Services is 3, Economic Environment is 2.

So the estimated 2029 reduction is 32 percent of fiscal 2027 property tax revenue, by the county’s own third column. The Sheriff’s Office share of that revenue is 31 percent, by the county’s own chart.

The county’s page answers that comparison before anybody makes it. Asked whether the estimates identify specific service reductions, it says no: “The revenue reduction estimates do not determine changes to a department, program, or service. Those decisions would require action through the County’s public budget process.”

Both figures are the county’s own, published on the same page, four screens apart.

What is on page 16

The table on the county’s page is a summary of one line in a state document, and the county links the document.

It is the Revenue Estimating Conference impact analysis for CS/HJR 1F, sponsor Representative Overdorf, reviewed June 12 and again July 10 of this year. Eighteen pages. Page 16 is headed “Impact By Government Type Within Each County,” with a column for each fiscal year from 26-27 through 31-32.

St. Johns County appears on it four times.

Government 27-28 28-29 29-30 30-31 31-32
St. Johns County, Board of County Commissioners (68,265,055) (136,081,441) (152,492,701) (171,151,761) (191,611,200)
All ISDs in St. Johns (3,850,618) (7,666,697) (8,610,700) (9,685,407) (10,865,275)
St. Augustine (3,188,098) (6,130,403) (7,290,845) (8,614,738) (10,084,140)
St. Augustine Beach (700,517) (1,437,883) (1,651,362) (1,902,400) (2,185,047)

The first row is the one the county publishes, rounded. The other three it does not, and there is no reason it should: it is a county page about the county’s budget. But a resident of St. Augustine pays a city millage as well as a county one, and the state has an estimate for that too, on the same page of the same file.

The parentheses are the state’s. They mean a reduction. The 26-27 column is a dash for every government in this county, which is the last budget year before the amendment could take effect.

What the amendment does

If voters approve it on Nov. 3, and it needs 60 percent, the second homestead exemption on non-school taxes becomes $150,000 in 2027 and $250,000 in 2028, adjusted by the Consumer Price Index from 2029. The state’s analysis notes what that replaces: a second exemption whose 2026 maximum is $76,411.

The assessment cap on most non-homestead property drops from 10 percent a year to 5.

School taxes are not touched. The homestead exemption against school levies stays at $25,000.

And there is a residency test. A person who was a permanent Florida resident on Dec. 31, 2026 gets the larger exemption. A person who becomes one after that gets $50,000 for four years, adjusted by CPI from 2028, and the full amount in the fifth year. Two houses of the same value on the same street can carry different bills, and which one is which depends on a date in December.

The amendment would take effect Jan. 1, 2027. A homeowner would first see it on the TRIM notice in August 2027 and on the bill that November.

What the county has not said

Nothing on the county’s page names a service, a position or a contract. It says those decisions would require action through the county’s public budget process, which is the same set of hearings that closed out this year’s budget earlier this month.

The town hall is Tuesday. The form closes Monday at 5.