By Susan Dickson, Staff Writer
Orange County voters narrowly rejected a proposed quarter-cent sales tax on Tuesday’s ballot, with 51.24 percent of voters against the referendum.
It was defeated with 21,810 votes against the sales tax, compared with 20,755 votes, or 48.76 percent, in favor.
County Manager Frank Clifton said commissioners proposed the tax to fund specific county needs, and that without it the county would have to deal with existing revenue streams.
“The county has to decide if it’s going to pursue those issues, and if they do, the revenues would have to come from spending cuts elsewhere or raising property taxes,†Clifton said. “We will not be able to aggressively pursue any of those issues at this time.â€
The tax could have generated $2.3 million annually. The Orange County Board of Commissioners had voted to dedicate 42.5 percent of the funds to economic development, 42.5 percent to schools and 15 percent to be split between EMS and library services.
“Those needs are not going to go away,†Clifton said.
In its 2007 budget, the legislature gave counties the option of a quarter-cent sales-tax increase or a 0.4 percent land-transfer tax to help compensate for money taken away from counties when the responsibility for paying for Medicaid was turned over to the state. As a result of that budget, counties lost state-supplied school-construction money and some sales-tax revenue.
Orange County voters overwhelmingly rejected a transfer-tax referendum in May 2008.
According to Clifton, the county has the option of pursuing the tax again.
The Orange County Board of Commissioners will discuss the tax at a meeting today (Thursday) at 7 p.m. at the county Department of Social Services building at 113 Mayo St. in Hillsborough.