How does Miami-Dade spend a dollar of your property taxes? We did the math

If Florida voters cut property taxes statewide, Miami-Dade’s elected leaders will be forced to upend a budget where most of those dollars fund public safety, transportation services and the Jackson Health hospital system, according to a Miami Herald analysis.

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Of the more than $3 billion that Miami-Dade plans to collect in property taxes next year, roughly 70 cents of every dollar fund the county’s Sheriff’s Office, fire department, jails, roads and transit costs, and Jackson, the Herald analysis found.

The finding highlights the challenge that could lie ahead if the county’s mayor and commissioners try to significantly reduce property-tax spending without cutting pay or services in those areas.

“If this passes, services will be cut,” Miami-Dade Commissioner Oliver Gilbert, a Democratic candidate for Congress, told the audience at a budget town hall Wednesday night at the North Dade Regional Library. “You need to hear that. … I don’t want you to be surprised.”

In November, Florida voters have the chance to amend the state constitution to rewrite how local governments charge property taxes on primary residences.

Amendment 3 would exempt $250,000 of a home’s assessed value from property taxes charged by county and municipal governments by 2028. It would also reduce from 10% to 5% the cap on value increases for all “non-homestead” property — real estate that doesn’t enjoy the current 3% cap that’s granted to primary residences under Florida’s homestead laws.

Miami-Dade’s budget office estimates the measure would cut property-tax revenue by about 20% — a loss of roughly $700 million once fully implemented in 2029.

Local governments could still raise their tax rates to make up for the lost revenue — a scenario that critics say could leave rental properties vulnerable to higher tax bills.

Backers of the tax-cut measure call it the only way to make local governments serious about cutting excessive spending. They note that property-tax revenue soared during the hot real estate market Florida enjoyed at the outside of the COVID-19 pandemic — in Miami-Dade, property-tax revenue increased nearly 60% between 2021 and 2026, compared to a 45% increase during the prior five years.

By rolling back property-tax revenue, supporters of the measure say they can deliver relief to homeowners who’ve been hit with higher insurance bills and other costs, while forcing local politicians to hunt for savings — without hurting core services.

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“Across-the-board cuts are not the answer,” Commissioner Roberto Gonzalez, a supporter of the tax-cut plan who has pushed for targeted cuts in Miami-Dade, said in a statement. “Smart prioritization, efficiency and responsible budgeting are how we protect essential services while delivering meaningful tax relief to our residents.”

What happens to Miami-Dade’s budget after a tax cut?

The Herald analysis highlights the challenges ahead if local leaders plan to keep funding intact for popular services like public safety, transit and healthcare while slashing property-tax dollars elsewhere. About 50 cents of every property-tax dollar fund three Miami-Dade expenses: the Sheriff’s Office, Fire and Rescue, and Corrections, home to the county’s jail system.

“If we have less money from property taxes, it will be extremely difficult to adequately fund public safety,” Miami-Dade Mayor Daniella Levine Cava, who is planning to campaign against Amendment 3, said after Wednesday’s town hall.

Even though property taxes are the top source of revenue for the county’s core services, the annual budget doesn’t give department-by-department breakdowns of how that revenue is spent. The Herald produced that analysis using Levine Cava’s 2027 budget proposal, which faces a final commission vote on Sept. 17.

To estimate how property taxes are spent, the Herald first calculated how much property-tax revenue goes into the main funding buckets for most core services. Those funding buckets are called general funds, and county budgets do detail how much each department receives from those funds.

The Herald applied the property-tax portion of each general fund — 78% for the and 35% for the reserved for municipal expenses in unincorporated areas across Miami-Dade — to each department’s general-fund allocation. That produced a rough estimate of how many property-tax dollars were in each budget.

Two departments required no complicated math. The Fire Rescue and Library departments each have their own designated property tax that supports the bulk of their budgets. Both of those revenue figures got added to the general-fund allocations to produce a grand total of roughly $3.35 billion in property taxes projected to be spent in 2027.

From there, the Herald divided each department’s budgeted property taxes by the total to get a share of all property taxes. That figure was then converted to cents out of a single property-tax dollar.

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Highlights from the Herald’s findings include:

• Government administrators and back-office managers will be an easy target if the property-tax cut passes. A nickel of every property-tax dollar goes to that category in the Herald analysis, slightly more than what goes to Miami-Dade’s 50 library branches. That category includes departments that manage government facilities or finances, including the budget office, property appraiser, procurement and building services.
• Miami-Dade sends more property taxes to Community Redevelopment Agencies (CRAs) than it does to the . CRAs are redevelopment districts funded by property taxes collected within their boundaries to pay for real estate projects, road repair, events and other local benefits. As real estate values rise, CRA funding does, too.
• Social services, including counseling programs for young criminal offenders, receive less than 2 cents from every dollar of property taxes.
• The county’s Fire Rescue Department, with a $928 million , receives the most property taxes — roughly 22 cents of every dollar. Almost all of that comes from the dedicated Fire Rescue property tax, which would also be reduced if the referendum passes in November.
• While the Sheriff’s Office receives more dollars from Miami-Dade’s two general funds, it landed second place in terms of property-tax funding. That’s because it relies on the unincorporated general fund for nearly 60% of its county dollars. State rules direct significantly more sales tax to the unincorporated general fund, diluting the share of property taxes.
• Animal Services, home to the county’s Doral shelter, eats up about a penny of every property-tax dollar spent.