I Ran Amendment 3 Through My Own House and the Cut Shrank

For two parts I’ve been talking about billions of dollars and statewide holes, which is the kind of number that slides right off a person. So let me bring it all the way down to one kitchen table. Mine. My husband Ron and I own a house here in Clermont, and when I wanted to understand what Amendment 3 actually does, I did the thing I’d tell anyone to do. I pulled out our tax bill and ran the numbers on our own house.

I’m not going to print my address, and you shouldn’t be able to find it from anything here. The only number that matters for this exercise is the taxable value, so I’ll round mine to $300,000 to keep the math clean.

The number that actually drives your bill

First, a quick word on which number to grab, because the wrong one throws everything off. What Zillow thinks your house is worth doesn’t matter here. What matters is the taxable value on your tax bill, which for a long-time homeowner is usually well below the market price, because Florida’s Save Our Homes cap has been holding your assessed value down a few percent a year. That gap is why your neighbor who just bought in can pay far more tax than you on a nearly identical house. Start from your taxable value, not the Zestimate.

The other thing to know is that your bill is really two bills stapled together. There’s the school part, and there’s everything else. Amendment 3 only reaches the everything-else. Hold that, because it’s where most people’s mental math goes wrong.

Running my house, line by line

Here in Lake County, the 2025 rates for a Clermont address break down close to this. The county government charges about 5.03 mills. The city of Clermont adds 4.59. The St. Johns River Water Management District tacks on about 0.18. A mill is a dollar for every thousand of taxable value, so those three non-school pieces come to roughly 9.79 mills together. The school district charges another 6.09 mills on top, and that one sits in its own bucket.

Right now I get a $50,000 homestead exemption on that non-school part. Amendment 3 raises it in two steps, to $150,000 for 2027 and $250,000 for 2028. So once it’s fully in, I’m shielding an extra $200,000 of value from that 9.79-mill non-school rate. Do the arithmetic: $200,000 times 9.79 mills is about $1,960 a year that stops showing up on my bill. The first step, in 2027, gets me a little under half of that. I’ll take it. Anyone would.

The part of my bill that doesn’t move at all

Now the part that surprised even me when I ran it. On my $300,000 house, the school portion is already about $1,670 a year, and Amendment 3 leaves every dollar of it exactly where it is. The school exemption stays at its old, smaller level. The school millage doesn’t change. So when a mailer tells me my property taxes are getting slashed, I have to translate: the non-school piece is getting a big cut, and the single largest line on my bill, the schools, isn’t moving.

That reframes the headline for me. My total bill on this house runs somewhere around $4,100 today. A $1,960 cut is close to half of the non-school side, which sounds enormous, and it’s real. But measured against the whole bill, schools included, it’s a bit under a quarter. Both of those things are true at the same time, and which one you lead with tells me whether someone is selling or explaining.

Gross cut versus what actually lands in my pocket

This is the line I most want you to hold onto, because it’s the one the campaign will never say out loud. The $1,960 is a gross figure. It assumes every millage rate stays frozen at today’s number. Nothing in Amendment 3 makes that promise.

Think about the spot this puts my county and city in, the one I laid out in Part 2. They just lost a chunk of revenue that keeps growing every year, and the amendment quietly capped the commercial side they’d normally lean on. One tool still sits on their desk, untouched: the millage rate itself. If Lake County or Clermont raises its rate to claw back even part of the gap, my gross $1,960 shrinks into a smaller net number, and my neighbor who rents, who got no exemption at all, pays more. I’m not predicting that happens. I’m telling you the amendment leaves that door wide open, and your actual savings live behind it.

Do this with your own bill tonight

You don’t have to take my house’s word for it. Every August the property appraiser mails you a TRIM notice, the one stamped “this is not a bill” that most of us toss. Dig it out, or pull your parcel up on the Lake County Property Appraiser site. Find your taxable value. Find the millage lines and separate the school one from the rest. Multiply your non-school millage by however much new exemption you’d gain, which is $200,000 for most established homesteads once this is fully in. That’s your gross cut. Then remember the school line isn’t moving, and that the rate itself can change. In five minutes you’ll know more about your own stake in this than any thirty-second ad will ever tell you.

What it means for you: If you own and homestead a Clermont house worth a few hundred thousand, you’re looking at something close to a couple thousand dollars a year once Amendment 3 fully lands, with the biggest savings on the priciest homes. Just keep three things straight: your school taxes don’t move, your gross cut is not your net cut, and the value you start from is the taxable one, not the Zillow one. Part 4 turns to the group this amendment is sold hardest to, the retiree on a fixed income, and asks whether the pitch holds up.