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County commissioners want the public to have input on the proposal before it goes to a November 2002 referendum.
By JAMES THORNER
© St. Petersburg Times, published March 14, 2001
DADE CITY -- Here's Pasco County commissioners' early blueprint for getting a new 1-cent sales tax approved:
First call it something catchy like Penny for Pasco.
Then talk about all the neat things the $22-million yearly tax intake would buy.
And by all means, don't highlight the word "sales tax." Rather, use a less wallet-pinching term such as "capital needs assessment."
At their meeting on Tuesday, Pasco commissioners talked serious turkey once again about placing a Penny for Pasco proposal on the ballot in November 2002.
But before the election day referendum, commissioners want county employees to pave the way for passage by building support among Pasco's traditionally tax-shy population.
Commissioners directed County Administrator John Gallagher to advertise a series of public brainstorming sessions over the next couple months.
They want to learn what voters would like to buy with the extra cent. Spending possibilities include roads, fire stations, parks, bicycle trails, schools and libraries.
Such sessions will help county officials promote the tax as if they were involved in a political campaign, Commissioner Ann Hildebrand said.
"Look at it as an investment for the county," Hildebrand said.
The two most recent tax increase proposals on the ballot -- a 1-cent sales tax for school construction in 1995 and a property tax hike for the Sheriff's Office in 1998 -- were resoundingly rejected.
Gallagher said the 1995 referendum failed because it focused too narrowly on schools. It turned off thousands of voters, many of them seniors, who foresaw no benefits from new schools.
Gallagher proposes offering something for everyone in an updated version of the sale tax. "We're going to make it real broad based," he said.
But Commissioner Pat Mulieri predicted strong opposition even to a more carefully crafted tax proposal. She suggested phasing out the 1-cent tax once the county paid for urgently needed projects.
"It might be a hard sell," Mulieri told her colleagues.
One way to sell the tax, Commissioner Peter Altman said, was simply to avoid using the word tax. A better choice would be something along the lines of "capital needs assessment," Altman said.
Other discussion at Tuesday's commissioners meeting dealt with the region's drought-inflicted water crisis.
In a suggestion that seemed to surprise his colleagues, Altman proposed temporarily diverting water from the Pithlachascotee and Anclote rivers to help replenish groundwater.
The suggestion came a week after engineers with the Southwest Florida Water Management District pitched a similar plan called the Pithlachascotee-Anclote Conservation Effort.
Swiftmud's project would involve lowering banks to encourage rivers to flood sooner during rainy periods. But Swiftmud wouldn't green light the project until it completed engineering and environmental studies costing at least $300,000.
Altman, however, pushed to begin a small-scale version of the Swiftmud project to take advantage of the coming summer rains.
"If this is really an emergency, can we take some emergency measures?" Altman said.
The idea of tapping the river arose later in the meeting as commissioners discussed the utility department's inability to produce enough reclaimed water to supply the lawn irrigation needs of new subdivisions.
Altman wondered whether utilities chief Doug Bramlett could suction water from the rivers for irrigation. Bramlett's answer: If the state would approve such a measure, you'd have to treat the water before spraying it on lawns.