You can’t have our penny

For the past few years (and more), residents have shown up in force to complain about flooding, overdevelopment, bad roads, and a litany of other things that need to be corrected in our county. They are so right.

We can think of so many areas of the county impacted by developments bringing in hundreds of people and cars to an area already suffering from heavy traffic. Roads are obsolete given the traffic counts, schools are reaching capacity ahead of schedule, and clearcutting is causing flooding issues. The list goes on.

As a county, we have demanded our leaders fix the problems, bring the infrastructure up to meet the growing areas and stop being beholden to the developers. Voters sent a huge message to Commissioners Sam Parker and James Calkins that developers should not run the county. They have deep pockets, but the voters have an almighty pen to make the changes needed in leadership. They basically said, we cannot keep doing things the way we have always done things. We were very proud of the message sent to the builders and to the commissioners.

What we aren’t proud of, though, is in the midst of all the great decisions voters made, they voted “no” on the penny tax. This is THE infrastructure money. We were all yelling “fix it!” and yet we voted down the funds for them to do so.

We have been trained and brainwashed into thinking all taxes are bad. Yet, tax money is what gets the work done. We need to limit the ask for higher taxes, and we also need to recognize when it is needed. The beauty of this tax is that it doesn’t fall solely on the back of homeowners. As a sales tax, it allows everyone to share in the responsibility. Everyone, including visitors, shoppers from the counties to our left and right who drive through or work here, we will all pay the tax.

Without the added half-cent tax on top of the current half-cent tax, will the county need to raise our millage rate? This will put the tax back solely on the homeowners. They are already paying school tax and fire tax – visitors aren’t paying it, renters aren’t paying it. It is the sole responsibility of homeowners. Raising the millage rate can put undue stress on people who have mortgages. Your house payment can increase when your mortgage company pays your higher property taxes. If you don’t have a mortgage, you will be paying more out of your pocket.

What many voters didn’t realize is the money collected from the current half cent has been brilliantly leveraged through matching infrastructure grants to nearly triple what they collected. No one that we know would turn down an opportunity to pay $1 for something and get $3 worth of product back. If your employer offered you that kind of match on a 401K, you would be shouting it to the world. Who doesn’t want to triple their money?

The voters of Santa Rosa County don’t. In fact, this penny tax also had impact fees attached to it. During public forum at the commission meetings, people are always asking commissioners to make the builders pay their fair share for infrastructure. Commissioner Colten Wright understood the assignment and told the voters if you want builders to pay their share, then you should want everyone to pay. He tied the sales tax to the impact fee. And what happened? Voters said no.

This tax also has in place an oversight committee which represents the people of Santa Rosa County and they ensure the projects the tax pays for are the projects the people want and need. This committee, known as the Local Option Sales Tax committee, holds regular open meetings the public can attend. How many people on average show up? ZERO.

If you complain about a problem, be ready to roll up your sleeves and help solve the problem. We had the opportunity to do that on election day, and we failed the residents of the county. We said no to funding infrastructure improvements.

Hopefully, we can send a message to commissioners next time that we are willing to help solve these problems.