Florida: State Guide to Counties, Towns and State Services

The Digital Towns Florida library holds county guides for Indian River, Brevard, Miami-Dade, Broward, Orange, Hillsborough, Pinellas, Duval and Leon counties, 16 town guides plus a South Brevard area guide, and a statewide topics library.

The deepest coverage is on the Treasure Coast and the Space Coast. Indian River County has a full county library and town guides for Sebastian, Vero Beach and Fellsmere. Brevard County has its own library and town guides for Melbourne, Palm Bay, Malabar, Grant-Valkaria, Micco and Barefoot Bay, plus a South Brevard guide that ties the south end of the county together.

The large metro areas each have one town guide under their county: Miami in Miami-Dade County, Fort Lauderdale in Broward County, Orlando in Orange County, Tampa in Hillsborough County, St. Petersburg in Pinellas County, Jacksonville in Duval County and Tallahassee, the state capital, in Leon County. The Florida topics library cuts across all of them, with sections on history, government, the economy, the environment, schools, real estate, recreation, sports, transportation and more.

Every Digital Towns county and town guide follows the same rule: each fact sits next to the official source it came from, and government pages carry the date they were last checked. The state page answers the questions that apply everywhere from Pensacola to Key West, and it sends the reader to the county or town guide for local detail such as a county Supervisor of Elections office or a city hall phone number.

Florida has 67 counties, each with its own Supervisor of Elections, and about 22,416,077 residents in the Census Bureau's ACS 2020-2024 5-year estimates.

The Florida Division of Elections states that each of the 67 counties has a Supervisor of Elections who conducts elections within that county, and it publishes contact details for all 67 (Florida Division of Elections). Homestead exemption applications also go to the property appraiser in the county where the property is located (Florida Department of Revenue), which is why Digital Towns builds a county library before the town guides inside it.

The American Community Survey (ACS) 2020-2024 5-year estimates count 22,416,077 Floridians, with a median age of 42.6 years (ACS 2024 DP05 table for Florida). Some 21.3 percent of the state's residents, about 4,781,978 people, were 65 or older. Indian River County runs far older than that state figure, with a median age of 55.3 in the same survey (ACS 2024 DP05 table for Indian River County).

Tallahassee is the capital of Florida, chosen in 1824 primarily because it was the midway point between St. Augustine and Pensacola (Florida Department of State).

The Executive Office of the Governor identifies Ron DeSantis as the 46th Governor of Florida (Executive Office of the Governor), and a governor is elected every four years in a general election (Florida Division of Elections).

The Florida Legislature is one of three branches of state government alongside the executive and judicial branches, and the Florida Senate is composed of 40 members, each elected from a single-member district (Florida Senate). The Florida Legislature meets in session every year for sixty consecutive days, and the Florida Senate's visitor pages cover parking, maps and the visitor center at the Capital Complex in Tallahassee. The Florida Senate site carries a legislator lookup for reaching a state senator.

Most errands never reach Tallahassee. Homestead filings go to the county property appraiser and paper voter registration forms are available at any county Supervisor of Elections office. The Tallahassee town guide and the Leon County guide cover the capital city itself.

A new Florida resident must get a Florida driver license within 30 days of establishing residency, and must title and register vehicles within 10 days, according to the Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles.

The Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles (FLHSMV) also requires Florida insurance from an agent licensed in Florida before a vehicle, vessel or mobile home can be titled and registered, and driver license and ID card applications must be made in person at a local office (FLHSMV new resident page). The initial Class E license fee is $48.00, an ID card is $25.00, and most local Tax Collector offices also charge a $6.25 service fee (FLHSMV), which is why the Indian River County and Brevard County libraries each have a driver licenses guide.

Voting is the next step. The Florida Division of Elections sets the registration deadline at 29 days before an election (Florida voter registration), and paper application forms are available at any county Supervisor of Elections office. Homeowners should look at the homestead exemption: the Florida Department of Revenue says it can cut a home's taxable value by as much as $50,000 and qualifies the home for an assessment limitation on homestead property (Florida Department of Revenue exemptions). Each county property appraiser takes the application; the county guides list the office and the deadline.

On taxes, the Florida Department of Revenue sets the general state sales tax at 6%, with exceptions such as 6.95% on electricity, and many counties add a discretionary sales surtax on top (Florida Department of Revenue sales tax). The Department publishes the county surtax rates each year on Form DR-15DSS, updated in November. The Indian River County economy section has a county sales tax guide.

Florida hurricane season runs from June 1 through November 30, and the Florida Division of Emergency Management asks every resident to know their evacuation zone before a storm.

The Florida Division of Emergency Management lists the season dates on its hurricanes page and lists storm surge, water pushed toward the shore by the force of the winds, first among hurricane hazards (Florida Division of Emergency Management hurricanes page). Its planning page tells residents to know their local emergency management office and to check the state evacuation zone map before a storm (Plan and Prepare).

The Florida Division of Emergency Management evacuation zone page explains that evacuation zones, low-lying flood prone areas, mobile homes and unsafe structures are the places most likely to be evacuated, and that the greatest threat to life from a hurricane is storm surge flooding (Florida evacuation zone page). A resident outside an ordered evacuation zone, in a sound home, may be safer sheltering in place. Evacuation orders themselves come from local officials, so the local emergency management office is the contact to keep.

One sign that the state pages are not always current: in October 2026 the Florida Division of Emergency Management evacuation zone page still opens under an Isaias Updates banner, a storm from 2020 (Florida Division of Emergency Management). The county safety sections in the Indian River County and Brevard County libraries cover each county's hurricane evacuation, shelters and emergency management.

The biggest date on the Florida calendar this fall is the November 3, 2026 general election, run by each county Supervisor of Elections, with registration closed on October 5 and mandatory early voting October 24 to 31.

The Florida Division of Elections lists the 2026 deadlines: register by October 5, 2026, request a mailed ballot by October 22, 2026, and vote early during the mandatory period of October 24 to 31, 2026 (Florida election dates). A general election is held on the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November of every even-numbered year.

The state dates are a floor, not the whole schedule: each county Supervisor of Elections may add optional early voting days. Indian River County, for example, opened early voting on October 19, five days before the state's mandatory window, with sites that include Sebastian City Hall (Indian River County Supervisor of Elections). The Indian River County and Brevard County libraries each carry election guides with the county's own dates and sites.

Florida State Parks counts 175 award-winning state parks, trails and historic sites (Florida State Parks). The Sebastian parks section, for instance, covers Sebastian Inlet State Park in its own guide.

Statewide questions start with the Florida topics library, county services with the county libraries, and city hall, parks and local storm questions with the town guides.

The Florida topics library groups pages by subject across the state: agriculture, arts, demographics, the economy, the environment, events, food, geography, government, health services, history, industries, the military, places and landmarks, real estate, recreation, schools, sports and transportation, with a Florida overview at the top. The county libraries for Indian River County and Brevard County carry the deepest service detail, with sections on government and taxes, schools, utilities, parks, safety and practical guides. The town guides, from Sebastian and Vero Beach to Tampa and Jacksonville, answer the city side.