Cutting Florida property taxes could take a bite out of mosquito control
By Jenny Staletovich
June 29, 2026 at 6:00 AM EDT
As Florida voters consider a dramatic cut to property taxes in this November’s election, they may overlook an unintended consequence of those savings: more mosquitoes.
Under the current proposal, mosquito control districts that depend solely on ad valorem taxes would see about a third of their budgets slashed, according to the Florida Mosquito Control Association. That would cripple the state’s 15 independent mosquito control districts fighting on the frontlines of the state’s most infested counties, where seasonal rains bring vicious swarms. Those districts, the association says, also serve as hubs for mosquito intel across the state in county-run programs, which could also see cuts under the proposal.
” Most people don't think about mosquito control every day,” said Sherry Burroughs, the association’s vice president. “But when it's absent, the community feels it very quickly.”
The referendum first proposed by Gov. Ron DeSantis provided an “opening salvo” of $250,000 in tax cuts on homesteaded property as the country celebrates its 250th birthday, with more to come. That would mean as many as 50 percent of homes in Broward would no longer be taxed, he said. To help offset losses, DeSantis proposed a state-run trust fund.
“Every tax base is not the same,” DeSantis said. “Miami, c’mon. They’ve got a massive tax base.”
In South Florida, a patchwork of independent and county-run mosquito control programs operate across some of the worst mosquito zones surrounding the Everglades. The region, with its international travel and commerce, also often serves as a gateway to mosquito-born diseases in the U.S., from dengue to chikungunya. Over the years, the special districts, including one in Monroe County where $20 million is spent annually to fight mosquitoes, have helped bolster county programs.
“ Mosquito control is probably one of the most misunderstood government organizations in Florida because nobody really connects the dots between our impact on the economy or anything else,” said Phil Goodman, a retired chemical industry executive who chairs the Florida Keys Mosquito Control District created more than 75 years ago.
“Nobody remembers when yellow fever and dengue fever and malaria were really rampant,” he said. “ Nobody remembers when our seaside communities were closed in the summertime because nobody wanted to come to Florida.”
A worker at Flamingo in what's now Everglades National Park carries a smudge pot to ward off mosquitoes. (600x397, AR: 1.5113350125944585)
And with climate change raising temperatures and fueling more intense rainfalls, mosquito season is likely to expand, meaning diseases spread by mosquitoes will also likely increase. The World Health Organization says 80 percent of the world's population is now at risk from diseases once considered only tropical.
Long before county programs, special mosquito control districts were established, beginning in the 1920s, when Florida pioneers were still digging ditches and toting around smudge pots filled with burning grass to ward off mosquitoes. Before then, mosquitoes ruled Florida. Most of the Atlantic coast, from what’s now Volusia County to Palm Beach, was part of Mosquito County until it was dissolved in the mid 1800s.
But after Miami suffered an outbreak of dengue fever that spread around the state, Goodman said, a Daytona Beach women’s group helped form the Florida Anti-Mosquito Association.
”The chart was set then that mosquitoes were gonna be controlled in Florida,” he said.
Lawmakers began funding local mosquito control districts, with the first established in Indian River County, in part because of the viscous swarms of mosquitoes emanating from the Indian River Lagoon. The creation of districts tended to follow the swarms.
“ Some were organized by the county, run by the county commission. Some were special taxing districts, like we have in the Florida Keys,” Goodman said. “By 1960, dengue fever, yellow fever [and] malaria were no longer endemic in the state of Florida. And this really opened up Florida for tourist travel.”
A 1920s real estate investor hoping to turn Sugarloaf Key in the Lower Keys into a fishing resort built a bat tower to help control mosquitoes. The effort failed after bats never occupied the tower. (600x897, AR: 0.6688963210702341)
Which can lead to a another problem: complacency.
”I've had people ask me, ‘Why do we even have mosquito control in the Keys? We don't have any mosquitoes there,’" Goodman said. “I say, ‘Thank you very much.’”
In 2016, Miami-Dade County learned what scaling back mosquito control can do when Zika slammed the county. County officials had spent the previous decade chipping away at the county program after dodging Keys’ outbreaks of dengue and Chikungunya. By the time Zika arrived, the county mosquito staff was down to just 17.
Despite dire warnings that Miami could become ground zero for transmission, the county proceeded as usual and took no special measures, operating on a budget of just $1.6 million. Eventually, two transmission zones developed, in Miami and Miami Beach, and led to 300 local cases. Statewide, 1,600 people were infected.
One-year-old Jose Wesley Campos was born with microcephaly after his mother was infected with Zika in 2015 Brazil, where about 1,000 cases of Zika still occur every year. Florida's 2016 outbreak primarily came from Caribbean countries. (1277x851, AR: 1.500587544065805)
In the aftermath, the county dramatically increased spending on mosquito control to $16 million and hired an entomologist recognized for his work fighting mosquitoes.
Mosquito control today, Goodman said, is merely part of good infrastructure.
”People don't come here to see the marvels of mosquito control. They come to Florida for the natural beauty, the beaches, the resorts, the fishing,” he said. “But mosquito control is really a prerequisite before you would have any of that.”
Advances in technology have also greatly changed how mosquito wars are fought. Rather than go after swarms once they hatch, programs now rely on surveillance and larvicide to kill the bugs first. The Keys district operates a fleet of five helicopters. Lee County’s mosquito control district, the state’s largest covering a territory of 1,200 square miles, operates both helicopters and drones.
“ We have entomologists. We have biologists. We have zoologists,” Goodman said. ”It's a pretty high-tech thing, but there's a real labor element as well.”
Control measures changed drastically with improvements in larvicide, which may explain why dusk in the Lower Keys is no longer a swat fest.
Programs are also guided by law on how they operate, meaning certain thresholds have to be met to trigger control efforts, like spraying with trucks-mounted buffalo foggers or aerial treatments, Burroughs said.
”Sometimes residents don't even think that we were in their environment because they didn't see a plume, they didn't hear us,” she said. “We're using such a limited amount of pesticide that's utilized for effective control. And we're utilizing drone applications so we can have more precision on our treatments.”
The Florida Keys Mosquito Control District uses a fleet of helicopters to conduct surveillance and target mosquito breeding areas with larvicide. (2048x1536, AR: 1.3333333333333333)
When it comes to the proposed tax cuts, Burroughs said, the association hopes to convince lawmakers to designate mosquito control as a core service, like firefighting and policing, to preserve funding.
The goal, she said, is “to ensure the policymakers recognize that mosquito control is an essential public health infrastructure, and that they understand the unintended consequences that could occur without appropriate protections.”
The wording on the referendum came into question this month when a newly formed nonprofit, Save Our Voters, filed a lawsuit in Leon County saying parts were misleading or unclear. The group argues that rather than be neutral, the ballot language endorsed “benefits” to taxpayers.
Goodman says he could care less about the politics.
”If you stop mosquito control here in the Florida Keys for two weeks,” he said, “you would see what it was like in 1950. One mosquito can produce tens of billions of mosquitoes in one season here in the Florida Keys. Just one mosquito, and we have a lot more than one.”
(2750x625, AR: 4.4)
Under the current proposal, mosquito control districts that depend solely on ad valorem taxes would see about a third of their budgets slashed, according to the Florida Mosquito Control Association. That would cripple the state’s 15 independent mosquito control districts fighting on the frontlines of the state’s most infested counties, where seasonal rains bring vicious swarms. Those districts, the association says, also serve as hubs for mosquito intel across the state in county-run programs, which could also see cuts under the proposal.
” Most people don't think about mosquito control every day,” said Sherry Burroughs, the association’s vice president. “But when it's absent, the community feels it very quickly.”
The referendum first proposed by Gov. Ron DeSantis provided an “opening salvo” of $250,000 in tax cuts on homesteaded property as the country celebrates its 250th birthday, with more to come. That would mean as many as 50 percent of homes in Broward would no longer be taxed, he said. To help offset losses, DeSantis proposed a state-run trust fund.
“Every tax base is not the same,” DeSantis said. “Miami, c’mon. They’ve got a massive tax base.”
In South Florida, a patchwork of independent and county-run mosquito control programs operate across some of the worst mosquito zones surrounding the Everglades. The region, with its international travel and commerce, also often serves as a gateway to mosquito-born diseases in the U.S., from dengue to chikungunya. Over the years, the special districts, including one in Monroe County where $20 million is spent annually to fight mosquitoes, have helped bolster county programs.
“ Mosquito control is probably one of the most misunderstood government organizations in Florida because nobody really connects the dots between our impact on the economy or anything else,” said Phil Goodman, a retired chemical industry executive who chairs the Florida Keys Mosquito Control District created more than 75 years ago.
“Nobody remembers when yellow fever and dengue fever and malaria were really rampant,” he said. “ Nobody remembers when our seaside communities were closed in the summertime because nobody wanted to come to Florida.”
A worker at Flamingo in what's now Everglades National Park carries a smudge pot to ward off mosquitoes. (600x397, AR: 1.5113350125944585)
And with climate change raising temperatures and fueling more intense rainfalls, mosquito season is likely to expand, meaning diseases spread by mosquitoes will also likely increase. The World Health Organization says 80 percent of the world's population is now at risk from diseases once considered only tropical.
Long before county programs, special mosquito control districts were established, beginning in the 1920s, when Florida pioneers were still digging ditches and toting around smudge pots filled with burning grass to ward off mosquitoes. Before then, mosquitoes ruled Florida. Most of the Atlantic coast, from what’s now Volusia County to Palm Beach, was part of Mosquito County until it was dissolved in the mid 1800s.
But after Miami suffered an outbreak of dengue fever that spread around the state, Goodman said, a Daytona Beach women’s group helped form the Florida Anti-Mosquito Association.
”The chart was set then that mosquitoes were gonna be controlled in Florida,” he said.
Lawmakers began funding local mosquito control districts, with the first established in Indian River County, in part because of the viscous swarms of mosquitoes emanating from the Indian River Lagoon. The creation of districts tended to follow the swarms.
“ Some were organized by the county, run by the county commission. Some were special taxing districts, like we have in the Florida Keys,” Goodman said. “By 1960, dengue fever, yellow fever [and] malaria were no longer endemic in the state of Florida. And this really opened up Florida for tourist travel.”
A 1920s real estate investor hoping to turn Sugarloaf Key in the Lower Keys into a fishing resort built a bat tower to help control mosquitoes. The effort failed after bats never occupied the tower. (600x897, AR: 0.6688963210702341)
Which can lead to a another problem: complacency.
”I've had people ask me, ‘Why do we even have mosquito control in the Keys? We don't have any mosquitoes there,’" Goodman said. “I say, ‘Thank you very much.’”
In 2016, Miami-Dade County learned what scaling back mosquito control can do when Zika slammed the county. County officials had spent the previous decade chipping away at the county program after dodging Keys’ outbreaks of dengue and Chikungunya. By the time Zika arrived, the county mosquito staff was down to just 17.
Despite dire warnings that Miami could become ground zero for transmission, the county proceeded as usual and took no special measures, operating on a budget of just $1.6 million. Eventually, two transmission zones developed, in Miami and Miami Beach, and led to 300 local cases. Statewide, 1,600 people were infected.
One-year-old Jose Wesley Campos was born with microcephaly after his mother was infected with Zika in 2015 Brazil, where about 1,000 cases of Zika still occur every year. Florida's 2016 outbreak primarily came from Caribbean countries. (1277x851, AR: 1.500587544065805)
In the aftermath, the county dramatically increased spending on mosquito control to $16 million and hired an entomologist recognized for his work fighting mosquitoes.
Mosquito control today, Goodman said, is merely part of good infrastructure.
”People don't come here to see the marvels of mosquito control. They come to Florida for the natural beauty, the beaches, the resorts, the fishing,” he said. “But mosquito control is really a prerequisite before you would have any of that.”
Advances in technology have also greatly changed how mosquito wars are fought. Rather than go after swarms once they hatch, programs now rely on surveillance and larvicide to kill the bugs first. The Keys district operates a fleet of five helicopters. Lee County’s mosquito control district, the state’s largest covering a territory of 1,200 square miles, operates both helicopters and drones.
“ We have entomologists. We have biologists. We have zoologists,” Goodman said. ”It's a pretty high-tech thing, but there's a real labor element as well.”
Control measures changed drastically with improvements in larvicide, which may explain why dusk in the Lower Keys is no longer a swat fest.
Programs are also guided by law on how they operate, meaning certain thresholds have to be met to trigger control efforts, like spraying with trucks-mounted buffalo foggers or aerial treatments, Burroughs said.
”Sometimes residents don't even think that we were in their environment because they didn't see a plume, they didn't hear us,” she said. “We're using such a limited amount of pesticide that's utilized for effective control. And we're utilizing drone applications so we can have more precision on our treatments.”
The Florida Keys Mosquito Control District uses a fleet of helicopters to conduct surveillance and target mosquito breeding areas with larvicide. (2048x1536, AR: 1.3333333333333333)
When it comes to the proposed tax cuts, Burroughs said, the association hopes to convince lawmakers to designate mosquito control as a core service, like firefighting and policing, to preserve funding.
The goal, she said, is “to ensure the policymakers recognize that mosquito control is an essential public health infrastructure, and that they understand the unintended consequences that could occur without appropriate protections.”
The wording on the referendum came into question this month when a newly formed nonprofit, Save Our Voters, filed a lawsuit in Leon County saying parts were misleading or unclear. The group argues that rather than be neutral, the ballot language endorsed “benefits” to taxpayers.
Goodman says he could care less about the politics.
”If you stop mosquito control here in the Florida Keys for two weeks,” he said, “you would see what it was like in 1950. One mosquito can produce tens of billions of mosquitoes in one season here in the Florida Keys. Just one mosquito, and we have a lot more than one.”
(2750x625, AR: 4.4)