The new year heralds the implementation of a six-cent increase in the gas tax the Santa Rosa County Board of County Commissioners (BOCC) passed last September. According to county officials, the BOCC wants road projects marked for gas tax dollars promptly while some are already underway.
The tax previously sat at six cents, the lowest among five neighboring counties. Jayne Bell of the SRC Office of Management and Budget said the increase will mean an additional $2.5 million for roadwork, projects county officials are looking to get underway sooner rather than later.
Commissioner Bob Cole said he was reluctant to back the tax at first but said, “I looked at it as matching to neighboring counties and what we’re able to do with the increase. It also helps curve any increase we can see in ad valorem.”
He added he liked the idea of visitors and tourists helping improve the county infrastructure. While the county doesn’t have a breakdown on how much gas tax funds would specifically come from tourism, Cole said 25 to 35 percent of state-wide local option sales tax funds (LOST) come from tourism and so a similar number may logically hold true for gas tax division.
Chairman Lane Lynchard agreed and hopes the percentage would be higher since gas is a necessity of travel compared to what LOST covers. He is also sure the other selling point of the tax will bear out, the theory saying gas companies will sooner eat the cost of a tax themselves, rather than pushing prices past competitors. “(We) had staff conduct research into the cost of gas in Santa RosaCounty versus adjacent counties. Adjacent counties already implemented the tax, and the results of that study showed… our gas cost more with less tax.”
According to Santa Rosa County Public Works Department Director Steve Furman, his fiscal year 2016 budget has already doubled (from $750,000 to $1.5 million). Note this fiscal year began October 1 and the tax went into effect January 1 so there will only be three quarters of a year’s tax collected. The next fiscal year will see an even larger increase for road projects.
Meanwhile, Furman said his department started submitting projects to the BOCC in District 5 (west of Navarre to Gulf Breeze) in December and they’re already underway.
Commissioner (now Chairman) Lane Lynchard said one road the county started with was Soundside Drive in Gulf Breeze. He said they’re also looking at a “big loop connector down in s end of the county. It's a very expensive seven-figure project.”
Furman said barring any major storm events, he’s confident his department will have projects for all five districts submitted within the next few meetings and have them finished the fiscal year. He said last year, “I think within a year after receiving this money there are going to be a lot of people on our worst roads…that will see a tremendous improvement in the quality of their roadways.”
Like the others, Lynchard didn’t wish to wait long in putting the tax to work. “That's my understanding, my intent, to go ahead and get underway as quickly as possible. I have no interest in building a war chest. We have enough current need that need to be addressed.”
During talks last August on the tax, Commissioner Bob Cole was hesitant, at first, to support it. “We’ve had tougher budgets in tougher times,” he said.
Commissioner Don Salter said these times were catching up and “if we kick the can down the road it will roll back down the hill.” Some of these “cans” came up during an August meeting including an erosion in $8 million in Road and Bridge Reserves since 2012, a cut of $500 to $750,000 in the paving budget since 2009, a $1 million cut in the machinery and equipment budget since 2007, postponement of resurfacing projects and more.
This article originally appeared on Santa Rosa Press Gazette: County makes speedy use of newly implemented gas tax