With the coronavirus pandemic looming over Central Florida in April 2020, Orange County Mayor Jerry Demings called off his 11-month campaign to raise the county sales tax by a penny, an increase he described as critical for improving the region’s deficient transportation network.
“Times are just too uncertain right now,” he said then.
But Tuesday, Demings, who was forced to work in isolation from home last week after testing positive for COVID-19, is expected to renew the surtax campaign at the county commission meeting where he will participate in a work session with the board and his staff.
The board also will discuss but not vote on a redistricting committee’s preferred plans to redraw commission district boundaries.
Orange County’s sales tax is 6.5%, lower than comparably sized Hillsborough County, which levies an 8.5% sales tax, the highest in the state.
Consumers pay 6.5 cents per dollar on purchases in Orange County — lower rates than Osceola, Seminole and Lake.
In Florida, counties’ sales tax rates are capped at 8.5 cents.
Demings provided no details ahead of Tuesday’s meeting and staff PowerPoint presentations are not made available to the public until the board sees them, but a brief description on the agenda shows they will review past efforts to raise taxes for transportation and plans to “re-engage with the community …”
Demings originally announced his plan to raise the sales tax in 2019 at his inaugural state-of-the-county address.
He must persuade the board to put the referendum on the November ballot — and then convince county voters to approve it.
The board won’t vote Tuesday but commissioners are likely to weigh in with their thoughts and concerns.
Hiking the sales tax could be a tough sell in an inflationary market, District 3 Commissioner Mayra Uribe said.
“Inflation is going up and we know we’re not likely to see that level off probably until the end of the year,” said Uribe, whose district includes parts of three municipalities, Orlando, Edgewood and Belle Isle. “People are not making enough money to pay their bills. Everything’s more expensive.”
The Consumer Price Index, considered a trusted gauge of inflation, rose 7% from December 2020 to December 2021, the highest rate in nearly 40 years, according to the Pew Research Center, a Washington-based, nonpartisan group known for public opinion polling and data-driven social-science research.
Commissioners Christine Moore in District 2 and Maribel Gomez-Cordero in District 4 may face tougher decisions on the surtax than other board members because the two are up for re-election in November. Both incumbents have drawn opponents as they bid for another four-year term.
A 2003 county effort to raise the sales tax by a half-cent to pay for transportation needs failed by a margin of 54% to 46%.
Commissioner Nicole Wilson, whose district includes fast-growing Horizon West, Windermere and Winter Garden, said she wants to see a more thoughtful strategy, which invests public money in other modes of transportation, less reliant on automobiles, as the county continues to grow.
“I’m not interested in supporting anything that just adds more pavement,” she said.
Before COVID-19 forced him to halt the 2020 campaign, Demings hosted a series of town hall-style sessions with voters promising to pump the proceeds from the surtax into improved roadways, more buses and rail options to handle the county’s expanding population of 1.4 million people.
While the county has other funding options, including raising the gas tax or property taxes, those alternatives would not raise as much as a higher sales tax. Demings has said a property tax increase would disproportionately impact county residents as it would only be paid by landowners.
According to a study commissioned by Visit Orlando, the sales tax increase proposed in 2020 would have raised $596 million a year and at least 51% of the tax burden would have been shouldered by tourists. It’s unclear whether those figures still hold true in the wake of the pandemic.
Redistricting
The board also is set to discuss two maps proposed by a committee, which studied new boundaries for the six commission districts.
Federal law requires the adjustment after every decennial U.S. Census to balance districts by population as evenly as possible.
The Voting Rights Act of 1965 requires that race and ethnicity be considered when voting districts are redrawn.
Courts have prohibited politicians from setting boundaries that weaken minority groups’ ability to elect representatives.
Both proposals have passed a required legal analysis, said Jason Reynolds, manager of neighborhood services who assisted the committee.
County commissioner each appointed two members of the 15-member committee and the mayor added three, including both co-chairs Camille Evans and Hector “Tico” Perez, but commissioners can opt for a map of their own choosing, including a proposal not recommended by the committee.
New boundaries must be in place by March 2022 as they will be used in the 2022 county commission elections for districts 2, 4 and 6.
shudak@orlandosentinel.com
