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Oakland Tuesday "conditionally" passed a resolution to allow the town to opt out of providing property tax exemptions to apartments within multifamily developments built under the Live Local Act if it turns out that the town is eligible to do so.
The vote, which required two-thirds of the commission to pass, was unanimous. A copy of the signed resolution will be sent to Orange County Property Appraiser Amy Mercado’s office.
Resolution 2025-14 is largely preventive since Oakland has no Live Local projects, planned or completed, within the town, Town Manager Elise Hui told VoxPopuli in an email on Wednesday.
Live Local Act housing developments are multifamily or mixed-use affordable housing, built in commercial, industrial or mixed-use areas. At least 40 percent of the units in a Live Local project must be set aside as affordable housing for income-eligible people, and those units must remain affordable for 30 years. One criticism of the 2023 legislation is that it encroaches on local government's zoning, density and height regulations. Florida Statute §196.1978(3)(o) allows municipalities to choose not to provide property tax exemptions for Live Local Act projects.
Ahead of the vote, Town Attorney Garrett Olsen of the Vose Law Firm in Winter Park, told the commission that it was a “standard form resolution that we’ve pushed out to all of our cities [that we represent].”
“Just about every city I think in the state has this up for consideration this month,” Olsen said. “This is something that everyone is jumping to take advantage of before the new year.”
The reason for the mad dash to pass a resolution before Jan. 1, is that notice to opt out of extending the property tax exemptions to Live Local projects must be filed annually with the property appraiser. A municipality’s ability to do that is based on whether a county has sufficient affordable housing. And that is determined each year by the Shimberg Center for Housing Studies. But because of the government shutdown, which lasted for 43 days from Oct. 1 to Nov. 12, 2025, the center’s report, typically available in November, is not expected to be released until later this month.
That’s important because the counties in the Shimberg Annual Report change every year, explained Cliff Shepard, a board-certified government law expert and founding partner of Shepard Smith Brackins & Hand in Maitland. He said his firm prepared similar resolutions for the cities they represent several months ago.
“You have to look year over year because next year [opting out] might not be an option,” Shepard said, adding that Orange County was on the list for 2024 and 2025. “But if we go below a certain number of units per capita, opt-out or exemption would not be available.”
Oakland’s Resolution 2025-14 states that it “preserve[s] Oakland’s ability to opt-out in the event the forthcoming Shimberg Annual Report shows that Oakland is eligible …"
The resolution will only go into effect “if eligibility is confirmed by the findings of the Report …” If that occurs, the resolution states that the property appraiser should “not grant any such exemptions for the 2025 tax roll.”
If the town is ineligible, according to the Shimberg Annual Report, the resolution becomes null and void. The resolution automatically expires on Jan. 1, 2027, unless renewed by the commission.
