Webb: Let's let voters pick tax approach

Citrus County Commissioner Winn Webb believes voters should pick their poison: Continue with the 6-cent per gallon gasoline tax to pay for road projects, or replace it with a 1-cent sales tax increase that would bring in significantly more money but not hurt the poor as much.

Webb floated the idea of a voter referendum during Tuesday’s special board meeting on impact fees.

County Attorney Richard Wesch urged commissioners to stick to the impact-fee topic and save talk about taxes for another day.

Webb said the gasoline tax hits the poor and elderly who have no choice but to drive to jobs or the doctor. A sales tax, he said, has exemptions for food and medicine.

“It hits the elderly retirees, of which we have 60,000 in this county,” he said of the gas tax. “They have to go to the doctor, they have to pick up their medications and they have to buy gas. Sales are discretionary spending. If I wanted to buy a new grill for $100, I’d pay an extra dollar.”

The county has a 12-cent per gallon gasoline tax. Half of that is used for road repairs and resurfacing projects; the other half, approved by the board in 2006, is pledged on a $30 million bond to pay for improvements to County Road 486 and other road projects.

Webb said the county receives about $2.4 million from the 6-cent gasoline tax for the road bonds, but could receive $10 million annually from a 1-cent sales tax increase.

He said the county could repay the bond faster and have money available to buy right-of-way on other widening projects, such as Croft Avenue and C.R. 491. He said the commission could decide what the remaining revenue should be used for.

The decision to stick with the gas tax or swap it out for a sales-tax increase, he said, should rest with voters in the 2012 election.

“The public deserves the opportunity to say yea or nay,” Webb said.

Webb raised the identical suggestion in November 2009 and didn’t receive a single backer on the commission to take it further. He said he brought it up again since new Commissioners Rebecca Bays and John “JJ” Kenney joined the board.

Unlike the last time, Webb’s suggestion appears to have some interest on the board.

“I don’t know if it’s a good idea or a bad idea,” Bays said Wednesday. “I know people are frustrated with about the price of gas in this county and are frustrated with the gas tax.”

Bays said she wants to learn more.

“It’s got to be researched to see if we can actually implement it,” Bays said . “If there’s a way we can reduce a debt taster and provide the benefit to citizens of our community, I’m all for it.”

Commissioner Joe Meek, however, said Wednesday he didn’t think the county should be suggesting a sales-tax increase without a specific plan.

“Anyway you look at that, it would be a substantial increase from our residents buying goods,” he said. “We need to have a discussion about what al that means. I’ve got a lot of concerns about it.”