Limit sales tax money to wastewater

Sometime next year, Monroe County voters will be asked to decide whether an existing one cent sales tax should be allowed to continue or be allowed to disappear from the county’s funding horizon.

The tax has been in place for about two decades already and has been the source of funding for large portions of the county’s ambitious wastewater projects, as well as other endeavors either liked or not-so-well liked by voters.

Some of those projects not-so-well liked by voters include the $3 million purchase of the defunct Hickory House Restaurant on Stock Island, the first $8 million in renovations of the Key West Airport Terminal and the building of the $15 million Murray Nelson Government Center.

Some of the money got used for buying land for and building parks in Key Largo and Big Pine and Big Coppitt, establishing a Lower Keys hurricane recovery distribution center on Big Pine and building new fire stations, including the one on Big Pine that had been all but condemned for more than a decade.

While most folks supported the public safety and parks expenditures, some of the other large ticket items drew some resounding boos from local residents, particularly those who were forking over several thousand dollars in hook up fees for wastewater systems. And from those slated to be hooked up to the Cudjoe Regional system for whom there is no money identified to even start the project with a December 2015 deadline looming.

The tax is scheduled to end in 2018. Almost every dollar of the money until then has been pledged, mostly to pay off loans for various wastewater systems, except the Cudjoe Regional.

But local officials are concerned that the bad rap the tax levy got from the expenditures no one supported might stand in the way of getting voters to reauthorize the tax beyond its sunset date in 2018.

And we must make no mistake about the need for that tax extension. Without voter approval of the tax extension, property owners from Lower Sugarloaf to Big Pine Key could well be forced to pay the entire cost of the estimated $150 million Cudjoe Regional system.

So to make the tax more palatable for those who have already received benefits from the money, County Administrator Roman Gastesi last week suggested that the tax could be extended out another 20 or 25 years and some of the funding could be used for other projects, like the renovation of Higgs Beach, or the rehabilitation of the old 7-Mile Bridge, so that a wider array of county residents could get something for the money they’ll pay.

Part of the reason the last one-cent sales tax levy left such a bad taste in the mouths of local voters was that the tax was sold as a way to pay for wastewater systems throughout the Keys. But the referendum was so loosely worded that the Board of County Commissioners, four of whom no longer have jobs, was able to funnel money to projects like Hickory House and the airport terminal.

And now that crunch time is here and Cudjoe Regional property owners are looking at a potential $20,000 bill for that system, it’s definitely not time to find other ways to spend the money.

We support the extension of the tax. Everyone aided all the other system users with that tax over the last two decades, now it’s time for those who “have theirs” to support those who don’t.

But what we can’t support is any spending proposal for those millions that doesn’t include 100 percent payments of the county’s share toward the Cudjoe Regional wastewater system for the life of the extension.

In our history, all too often the wants get taken care of before the needs. This cannot be one of those times.

We can make a strong case that shared sacrifice is a good idea for the next 15 years to pay down a portion of the Cudjoe Regional system. We can’t make a strong case that 25 years of a tax that allows for wants ahead of needs is a good idea for anyone.

We have a strong, focused county commission at the moment. But it only takes a couple of bad choices by the electorate, or a couple of changed minds among the seated members, to change that.

We urge a tightly worded, focused ballot question on the tax extension that leaves no wiggle room for the use of the funds raised.

Every dime goes to completing wastewater projects, with any excess going to pay down already borrowed money to equalize rates.

Anything else will doom the measure to failure.

And that would make for hard choices by property owners in the Lower Keys. Try and bite the bullet in a soft economy and pay the full freight, or move on.

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