In Florida’s Tampa Bay region, a record outbreak of dengue has sickened hundreds of people bitten by the mosquitoes that carry it in recent months.
Hillsborough County, the epicenter, has burned through its annual $7 million mosquito control budget as crews fan out daily to eliminate stagnant pools of water where the insects lay their eggs.
Fighting future outbreaks may become more challenging.
Florida voters will decide on Tuesday whether to approve a steep property tax cut, a measure the state’s Republican leaders have pushed as a way to curb the soaring cost of living, even as critics warn that it could devastate local budgets. While the concern has largely focused on police, fire, library and parks budgets, property tax dollars also help pay for mosquito control efforts that help make the warm, wet state livable.
“People don’t think about mosquito control until they don’t have it and it becomes a critical issue,” said Jeff Brandes, a Republican former state senator who is crusading against the measure. He lives in St. Petersburg, a city hit by the outbreak.
The measure, known as Amendment 3, would increase the tax break for homestead properties, or primary residences, to $150,000 next year, from $50,000. The exemption would increase to $250,000 in 2028.
In Florida, constitutional amendments require approval from 60 percent of voters to pass. The measure has divided party leaders, but Gov. Ron DeSantis, a term-limited Republican who will leave office in January, supports it, saying that local governments have grown bloated and inefficient. The governor’s office did not respond to a request for comment about the amendment’s potential impact on mosquito control.
The insects thrive in the Florida Everglades and in marshes around the state. While West Nile virus is the most common disease they spread, the state also draws international visitors who may have been infected with dengue, malaria or chikungunya before arriving, which then spread through local mosquitoes.
That is what happened a decade ago when the Zika virus, which can cause birth defects, spread from Latin America to Miami.
In the Tampa Bay region, Katherine Miller fell ill with dengue recently. She suffered fatigue, fever, body aches, rash and one strange symptom, she said: Everything she ate tasted salty.
Ms. Miller, 51, a mother of two in St. Petersburg, said she had voted early against the property tax amendment because of how it might reduce tax dollars for public safety — which, in her mind, includes mosquito control.
“We all want tax breaks, but all that money just can’t disappear,” Ms. Miller said.
Florida’s mosquito control efforts include dozens of programs run by counties, many of them already underfunded, said Phil Goodman, a representative of the Florida Mosquito Control Association, which has not taken an official stance on the ballot measure.
There are also more than a dozen independent mosquito control districts, funded with property tax dollars. Over the decades, these districts have led the way in developing strategies for effectively controlling mosquitoes, said Mr. Goodman, a commissioner of the district in the Florida Keys.
In Pasco County, one of three counties to declare states of emergency over the dengue outbreak, the mosquito control district may lose a third of its $13 million annual budget within two years, said Adriane N. Rogers, the district’s executive director.
Since the dengue outbreak, the district’s helicopter pilots have been flying almost daily to spread larvicide over neighborhoods, targeting the Aedes aegypti mosquito that spreads dengue and lays eggs primarily in standing water that collects in buckets, flower pots and even discarded tires. The winter dry season in Florida is expected to be especially rainy because of El Niño.
Pilots and ground crews from these better-funded districts have been helping out in Hillsborough County, which has recorded about 400 dengue cases, roughly half of the state’s total this year. The areas of concern for dengue spread have increased to more than 200,000 acres, nearly a third of the county, said Josh Bellotti, the Hillsborough County public works director, whose agency has dipped into emergency funds to defray costs.
“It’s critical for us to have outside help,” Mr. Bellotti said.
Mr. Bellotti and other officials involved in Florida mosquito control say it is too early to forecast exactly how services or staff might be affected if Amendment 3 passes.
Mosquito control districts could vote to raise taxes, shifting the burden onto people who own second homes, rental properties and businesses. Raising taxes, however, is a tough sell in any state — let alone one that leans increasingly Republican.
Matthew Abbott, a longtime elected commissioner for the Pasco County Mosquito Control District who goes by the nickname Skeeter, said he hoped state lawmakers would find new funding streams for mosquito control “rather than let Mother Nature take Florida back.”
But Mr. Abbott illustrates the very Florida tensions inherent in the ballot measure. He is also a real estate agent who laments that potential buyers, including his own adult children, can’t afford to buy homes anymore.
He is undecided but is leaning toward voting for the tax cut.
The post How a Tax Cut Could Threaten a Florida Necessity: Mosquito Control appeared first on New York Times.
