By DOTTY NIST
On the horizon as a result of recent county commission action are a sales tax rate reduction, deployment of artificial reefs in a permitted snorkel reef area off Grayton Beach, and a possible world-class meeting to examine innovative transit options for CR-30A.
These were items on the agenda for the June 9 Walton County Board of County Commissioners (BCC) meeting at the South Walton Annex.
In a 2012 referendum, Walton County voters had approved a half-cent per dollar hike in the sales tax in connection with a $75 million local match required by the state for the widening of the U.S. 331 bay bridge. This is a project currently under construction. The county had taken out a loan to finance the matching funds, with the loan to be repaid by means of the sales tax.
Due to the bid awarded for the project coming in at significantly less than anticipated, the local match had been reduced to approximately $18 million, and the state had previously refunded $50 million of the $75 million, with Walton County using the refunded amount to pay down the loan.
At the June 9 BCC meeting, the commissioners approved a resolution to accept from the state an additional refund of $7,227,657, which Walton County Attorney Mark Davis explained was due the county as of the date of the meeting from funds collected in excess of “what our portion of the bridge would be.”
In response to District 5 Commissioner Cindy Meadows’ question about where the refunded funds would be applied, Davis said that his understanding was they would be used to complete repayment of the loan.
Davis added that an “idiosyncrasy” of the referendum had been that the half-cent sales tax would continue to be collected through the end of the calendar year. This was despite any action by the BCC to discontinue the tax.
“There’s a question about what we can or cannot do with the money collected between now and the end of the year,” he said.
County Commission Chairman Bill Imfeld followed up quickly with a motion for the county to proceed with the sunsetting of the half-cent sales tax, which had been set up to carry through 2018.
Imfeld explained that, although the county is always about 45 days in arrears in receiving the sales tax collected by the state, hard calculations “as of today” showed that sufficient funds had been collected to call for the elimination of the half-cent sales tax.
His motion was approved unanimously, with plans for the tax to be eliminated beginning in 2016 in accordance with state statute.
Also approved at the June 9 meeting was a TDC request to provide $150,000 in bed tax funding for the deployment of 15 to 18 artificial reefs in a permitted snorkel reef site off Grayton Beach. The deployment is part of a Walton County Reef Management Plan developed by the local nonprofit organization South Walton Artificial Reef Association (SWARA). The plan was also approved as part of the consent agenda at the BCC meeting.
The snorkel reef deployment is envisioned for July 1, weather permitting.
The commissioners also endorsed an application for a 100-percent state Department of Economic Opportunity (DEO) grant for what was described as a “world-class workshop” on innovative transit solutions for CR-30A.
In May, the BCC had approved a $64,000 expenditure of proportionate fair share funding to have the West Florida Regional Planning Council (WFRPC) perform a traditional analysis of possibilities for transit such as trolleys, trams, or buses countywide.
Mac Carpenter of Walton County Planning and Development Services told the commissioners that the idea for the workshop to be funded through the $19,500 DEO grant would be to examine a “broad spectrum” of innovative transit concepts and solutions, among which would be driverless car transit systems utilizing cell phone/smart phone technology, similar to Uber and Lyft. He also mentioned systems using electric vehicles and associated charging technologies.
Carpenter said the workshop would be a partnership effort with Seaside and with entities working with the International Center for Automotive Research, based in South Carolina. Information from the workshop, he continued, would be shared with WFRPC as the traditional study proceeded, and vice versa.
Walton County Administrator Larry Jones commented that, although the innovative technologies workshop would focus on solutions for CR-30A, successful technologies resulting from the investigations could be expanded to other areas of the county.
