Santa Rosa voters could be asked (again) to approve penny sales tax next year. Will they?

Almost two years after Santa Rosa County voters struck down a full penny Local Option Sales Tax in a contentious special election, District 1 Commissioner Sam Parker says he's going to try again to get the half-cent tax increase on the November 2022 ballot. 

Parker, who led the charge in 2019 to hold a special election to see if voters would approve a half-cent sales tax increase, told the News Journal last week that he intends to ask his fellow commissioners if they will support a second initiative as next year's election season winds up. 

“I plan to ask the other commissioners if they will support putting a referendum on the November 2022 ballot to allow citizens to choose if they would want to pay an additional half-cent Local Option Sales Tax (LOST), dedicated only to funding transportation improvements,” Parker said. “It would only legally be allowed for transportation improvements, and nothing else.”

Strike down:Santa Rosa County voters strike down penny tax in contentious special election

Tax approval:Election 2020: Santa Rosa voters overwhelmingly approve half-cent sales tax extension

Santa Rosa County voters decisively struck down the penny tax in the October 2019 special election, when that was the only item on the ballot. In that election, 67% of voters rejected the ballot measure, while 33% approved it.

Had it passed, the full-penny tax would have replaced the half-cent sales tax that voters first approved in 2016 and then re-approved in 2020. Approving the measure in 2019 would have raised the sales tax from 7% to 7.5%, putting it in line with neighboring Escambia County. 

The county maintained that if the penny tax measure passed in 2019, it would have generated upward of $180 million during the next 10 years to pay for local capital improvements and infrastructure needs, including roads, parks, public safety, bridges and more.

New LOST language would be exclusively for roads

If the measure is put on the ballot next year, it will be under decidedly different circumstances. 

Instead of paying for an array of county needs, it would pay only for transportation projects, such as road improvements, street repairs and road widening. That's in line with the board's directives, especially in the past year, to get its county roadways up to par with the huge increase in residential and commercial development that has taken place the past few years. 

Reactive vs. proactive:Pay raises, new traffic unit: What to know about Santa Rosa County's budget

Impact fee discussions begin:Santa Rosa County commissioners vote to consider impact fees after penny tax defeat

“I think having it specifically tied to only being allowed for transportation improvements will make a big difference, because not everyone uses parks or first responders or drainage, but everyone is affected by congested roadways,” Parker said. “The best thing I like about the Local Option Sales Tax is that it’s up to the citizens to vote and choose if they want to have that additional investment in our transportation.”  

The Board of County Commissioners has struggled to come up with ways of finding alternative revenue sources to pay for much-needed road improvements. During budget talks this summer, commissioners briefly considered adding a communication sales tax to people's cellphone bills, but unanimously struck it down in the interest of not raising taxes.

The board also tossed around the idea of adding a water franchise fee to utility bills in order to fund new roads, but lost appetite for the fee after the communication tax was so unpopular. 

The county also has refused to raise the millage rate, and wants to keep property taxes among the lowest in the state. 

In advocating for the measure to be put on the ballot again, and in the hopes that people approve it, Parker said he’s going to approach the tax differently this time around.

“I’ve recently started calling it a ‘tourist impact fee’ instead of a sales tax,” Parker said. “To me, the Local Option Sales Tax is absolutely the fairest and most efficient way that we can allow the tourists that come and visit our community to help pay a significant portion of the infrastructure improvements. And it’s a way that we can allow the tax burden to be taken off the backs of property owners in this county.”

Now that impact fees are on the table, will it change voters' minds?

In another sign of how times are different, the county is at a much different place now than it was two years ago concerning impact fees. One of the main complaints from voters who contested the sales tax increase in 2019 was that the county didn't have any impact fees. Voters said they wanted commissioners to pass impact fees, which would put more of a financial burden on developers whose projects put a strain on infrastructure in the first place. 

Impact fees are one-time fees placed on new commercial and residential builds that are proportional to the development's impact on the surrounding infrastructure. 

Two days after the Oct. 8, 2019, special election defeat of the penny sales tax, the Board of County Commissioners voted to direct county staff to explore the possibility of impact fees, saying they believed voters had spoken and impact fees would be the only way to get a LOST increase approved in the future. 

The board approved educational impact fees at the request of the Santa Rosa County School District in January 2020 and started collecting them in May 2020. The county and school district were subsequently sued by the Home Builders Association of West Florida, and a county judge ordered the county to stop collecting the impact fees until an official ruling is made on whether the impact fees are constitutional and legal. 

As of Friday, the judge has not made her final ruling on the school impact fee. 

Still, impact fees aren't entirely off the table for Santa Rosa County either. In July 2020, the board commissioned a study that suggested county impact fees for roads, parks and law enforcement, which, if layered on top of educational impact fees, could add about an $8,000 total impact fee on top of the price for a new home. 

The board is holding off on pursuing impact fees of its own at the moment, however, due to the school board lawsuit. 

“Our county attorney has advised that we don’t try to implement any county impact fee until this court case is settled with the impact fee that the board already passed,” Parker said. “Our board is following our attorney’s guidance.”

Impact fees for the county:Santa Rosa County takes up $8,000 impact fees again in 2021, could slash them in half

But will the board's efforts to impose impact fees make a difference to voters who advocated for them in 2019?

Dara Hartigan, who was one of the most outspoken critics of the LOST increase in 2019 and is president of the citizen activist group Save Our Soundside, said she’s not so sure.

She told the News Journal on Friday that she still doesn’t think the board has pushed aggressively enough to impose impact fees.

“When you look at the overall picture, nothing has really changed, except for them going forward with the educational impact fees,” Hartigan said. “For me, it will depend on what they do not only with the Land Development Code, but also with the impact fees for development. Keep in mind that with all these new commercial developments, like the Publix in Milton and Dollar Generals everywhere, it’s going to be big box stores that pay the lion’s share of impact fees. It’s only residential development to a certain extent.

“The fact is, the public is still subsidizing residential development, and the developers are profiting off that,” she added. “I think you’re still going to see pushback from the public until something is done to level this playing field.”

The next Board of County Commissioners meeting will begin at 4:30 p.m. Aug. 10 in the board chambers at 6495 Caroline St.

Annie Blanks can be reached at ablanks@pnj.com or 850-435-8632.