BREVARD COUNTY, Fla. – The tax that helps clean the polluted Indian River Lagoon doesn’t expire for two more years, but some are already calling for extending the half-cents penny sales tax another 10 years.
Tuesday, Brevard County commissioners will discuss adding the tax extension to the ballot this November.
Craig Wallace of the Brevard Indian River Lagoon coalition said the tax was never intended to only last 10 years.
“What we’re trying to do is prevent that time delay between now and when they can actually start the planning and get the programs going for the next phase of the program,” Wallace said of cleanup that’s still left to do.
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Since 2016, the tax has collected hundreds of millions of dollars for project like dredging and muck removal, but commissioner John Tobia says the county has only spent a fraction of that.
“We’ve only completed about 13% of the total spend so about $77 million,” Tobia told News 6 reporter James Sparvero. “Now, we have a few hundred million in the process, but I think it’s premature to go back to the taxpayers, ask for another half billion dollars and not get the results of the projects that we currently have underway.”
Tobia added he thinks cleanup efforts have been great and are yielding results.
“I just want to see the totality of those results before we go and ask for more money from the voters,” he said.
Wallace also talked about the positive changes like water clearing up.
“We haven’t had those big algae blooms in the last two or three years,” he said. “If we just ignore things, we wait for the next hurricane to come along, it destroys everything, all the progress we made, then we’re going to say, ‘Oh, boy. Maybe we shouldn’t have stopped it.’”
Tuesday morning’s commission meeting starts at 9.
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