Florida State University Associate Professors of Urban and Regional Planning, William Butler, Ph.D., Tisha Holmes, Ph.D, and doctoral student Anthony Milordis, co-authored, “Can Florida’s Coast Survive Its Reliance on Development? Fiscal Vulnerability and Funding Woes Under Sea Level Rise.” published in the Journal of the American Planning Association, one of the flagship journals of the field of urban planning. Below is a summary of the article written by graduate student Emma Knight (MSP 23’, MBA 24’).
Florida State University Associate Professors of Urban and Regional Planning, William Butler, Ph.D., Tisha Holmes, Ph.D, and doctoral student Anthony Milordis, co-authored, “Can Florida’s Coast Survive Its Reliance on Development? Fiscal Vulnerability and Funding Woes Under Sea Level Rise.” published in the Journal of the American Planning Association, one of the flagship journals of the field of urban planning.
This article was published alongside Linda Shi, Assistant Professor of City and Regional Planning at Cornell University, Ryan Thomas, Ph.D., Jonathan Ignatowski; and Cornell doctoral candidates, Yousuf Mahid and Austin M. Aldag, of City and Regional Planning.
In “Can Florida’s Coast Survive Its Reliance on Development? Fiscal Vulnerability and Funding Woes Under Sea Level Rise,” the authors argue that the impacts of climate change, including sea level rise, increased storm intensity, wildfires, and more will increasingly stress local communities. Florida’s coastal communities, in particular, are on the frontlines of climate change impacts in the coming decades. These impacts not only create physical challenges for homes and infrastructure but also fiscal ones for governments at all levels.
While we often think about the physical impacts, we rarely ask how local government finances affect adaptation options and vulnerability to increased risks. In the United States, our municipal finance system relies on property taxes, which provide an average 30% of local revenues. They are one of the only funding sources that local governments can control.
However, sea level rise may inundate properties at rates that erode local tax revenues faster than local governments can invest to protect at-risk lands. Their work asks 1) how extensive this collision between physical and fiscal risk is likely to stress local budgets in this century and 2) whether local governments are calibrating their budget expectations to account for this changing context.
Using combined datasets, the researchers were able to map the fiscal risks using local budget and property tax revenue data and to determine the extent to which local planners and managers were aware of and responding to the fiscal risks through a statewide survey of coastal local government officials. They found that sea level rise is likely to increase the risks of coastal flooding to infrastructure and communities, but local governments also face increasing fiscal risks to their budgets as they rely heavily on local budgets and property taxes to invest in climate adaptation measures.
Using tax data from Florida’s coastal communities and modeling of sea level rise impacts, the authors determined that five million people live in a municipality where 10% or more of local revenues comes from properties at risk of chronic and permanent flooding with six and a half feet of sea level rise.
For 64 municipalities, half of their revenues come from these risk zones. Some of these can be seen in Figure 5 below. This translates into $619 billion in assessed property values that contribute $2.36 billion in property taxes. Meanwhile, local governments are responsible for most climate adaptation planning expenditures from their local budgets with minimal (but growing) support from state and federal sources.
Dr. Butler noted that, “Our work suggests that Florida’s municipalities are underprepared for this catch-22 of physical and fiscal impacts of sea level rise. However, we also note that there is some time to recalibrate municipal budgets and increase resilience through shared governance of land and infrastructure, expand local revenue sources, and develop equitable responses to climate adaptation investments from the state and federal levels,” Dr. Butler said. “What is clear is that business-as-usual development on Florida’s coast is on a collision course with climate change impacts.”
Dr. Butler, Dr. Holmes, and Mr. Milordis would like to see future research that continues to update and calibrate the analysis in response to changing conditions in municipal budgets and sea level rise data. Moreover, future researchers should study effective responses to the fiscal challenges that climate change poses so that other communities can implement evidence-based strategies.
To learn more about Dr. Butler, Dr. Holmes, and Mr. Milordis and their work, click here, or to learn more about the Department of Urban and Regional Planning, click here.
Linda Shi, William Butler, Tisha Holmes, Ryan Thomas, Anthony Milordis, Jonathan Ignatowski, Yousuf Mahid & Austin M. Aldag (2023) Can Florida’s Coast Survive Its Reliance on Development?, Journal of the American Planning Association, DOI: 10.1080/01944363.2023.2249866