Opinion ID: 1788426
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 6

Heading: Authority of Local Governments

Text: It is also virtually impossible to square the majority's narrow construction of the term municipal purpose with Florida's long history favoring home rule and local government and decision-making at the local level as to the use of municipal property to serve local residents. The approach advocated by the majority alters the historic presumption in favor of cities that has traditionally allowed them broad discretion to decide what constitutes a municipal purpose. By now restricting the definition of municipal purpose to include only those endeavors deemed essential, the majority seems to suggest that municipalities cannot be trusted to determine what activities benefit its own citizens. In fact, with the majority's new and restrictive definition of municipal purpose, one is left to wonder what will happen to all of the services that municipalities now provide, including municipal parks, pools, zoos and a multitude of other services that have previously withstood court challenges to their tax-exempt status. [15] Hopefully, the majority is not signaling a return to the days of the early twentieth century when a municipal purpose was restricted to police protection or such enterprises as were strictly governmental. See McDavid, 200 So. at 102. Surely, the technological and societal advances recognized as appropriate for municipal attention since the early twentieth century are too significant for this Court to now roll back the clock on the services that Florida's municipalities have decided to provide their citizens through the use of municipally owned property.