Orange County voters won’t be asked — at least, not this November — to consider approving a new sales tax to fund infrastructure improvements ranging from the acquisition of conservation land to public transit and affordable housing.
That was the main takeaway from Monday’s special meeting for commissioners, which lasted nearly four hours. Commissioners were there to decide whether or not to direct county staff to move forward with quickly finalizing the language and other elements that would be necessary for getting the question on this year’s ballot.
Ultimately, though, commissioners couldn’t reach a consensus on Monday.
“You got a direction: just stop,” Mayor Jerry Demings told staff at the end of Monday’s meeting. “Realistically, I just think the timing is wrong.”
‘Terrible timing’
May 7 would’ve been the commission's deadline to submit finalized language for a proposed ordinance to the state’s Office of Program Policy Analysis and Government Accountability, or OPPAGA. To meet that deadline, commissioners would’ve had to approve ballot language by April 7, according to county staff.
“For me, the timeline, it's a little bit condensed,” said District 6 Commissioner Michael Scott.
Scott said, ideally, he’d prefer for commissioners to have more time to meet with constituents and community organizations within each of their districts, to get “a temperature check” on which kinds of infrastructure improvements residents would support taxing themselves to fund.
Meanwhile, Demings said, affordability challenges abound — locally and nationally. That makes the concept of a new sales tax a “hard sell,” he said, especially given state lawmakers’ ongoing discussions about major property tax reform.
“With the affordability challenges that we have, just across our state, across our country — and you're saying, basically: tax the people more,” Demings said. “I'm being transparent. I think it's just terrible timing.”
District 2 Commissioner Christine Moore, who’s currently running to become the mayor of Apopka, said her main concern is a lack of consensus among all commissioners about what exactly the sales tax would fund.
“If we're going to do it, we all have to be together, and we have to lead together with the cities,” Moore said. “And that's what I'm not hearing.”
If furthered to November’s ballot and approved by voters, the proposed sales tax could generate an estimated $529 million a year for Orange County and another $229 million for its cities.
But on the likelihood of a true partnership between the county and its municipalities, Demings was skeptical. Several times Monday, he referenced his failed transportation sales tax initiative, which county voters rejected in 2022.
“The municipalities, obviously, they're all about sharing in the funds,” Demings said. “But I can tell you, we did not get the kind of help — the kind of buy-in, the kind of help to sell this to the public — that we needed then.”
Launching a referendum campaign would require funding, likely more than $1 million, which the regular county budget wouldn’t be able to cover, Demings said. It would also require tapping a commissioner to head up the campaign.
Local support for conservation land
Monday’s special meeting followed a presentation commissioners heard last month from the Trust for Public Land. The national nonprofit helps local communities protect beloved public spaces like schoolyards and parks and green open space for recreation.
TPL has worked in Central Florida before, including on the acquisition of Orlando’s historic Wells’Built Hotel, additional land for Lake Eola Park and Orange County’s West Orange Trail. Before last month, District 1 Commissioner Nicole Wilson had been advocating for more than a year for commissioners to hear from TPL on different ways the county could fund the acquisition of more conservation land.
At last month’s meeting, commissioners gave TPL the go-ahead to begin studying the feasibility of a new, local sales tax that would fund land conservation and other infrastructure needs. As part of that work, TPL polled more than 800 county voters to get a sense of the public appetite for such a tax.
On Monday, TPL’s associate director of conservation finance Pegeen Hanrahan shared some of the key findings from TPL’s survey of Orange County voters. The poll gauged voter sentiment on both options being considered for the sales tax amount: a half-cent and a whole cent.
“Both had very strong voter support. The half-cent, not surprisingly, was a little higher, at 62%,” Hanrahan said.
Other survey questions focused on evaluating things like what voters would prefer for the infrastructure sales tax to fund, as well as the county’s current growth rate. A majority of voters surveyed, 59%, said Orange County is growing too fast.
All of the sales tax’s potential uses received “a pretty substantial level of public support,” Hanrahan said. But based on the TPL’s survey methodology, it was conservation uses — things like protecting water quality and conserving wildlife habitat — that tested strongest.
Right now, TPL is working with nine other counties in Florida on local funding initiatives for voters to decide on this November, Hanrahan said. A tenth county, Brevard, is “considering” working with TPL as well. The nonprofit helped Brevard with its half-cent sales tax funding Indian River Lagoon restoration projects, initially approved by voters in 2016. The lagoon tax expires at the end of this year.
“Orange is entirely surrounded by counties, including Seminole, Polk and Osceola, that have voter-authorized funding sources for land conservation,” Hanrahan said.
‘God bless the future board’
Monday’s hours-long meeting also included input from county staff who spoke about various capital projects in need of funding, from road improvement projects to affordable housing. Commissioners raised some concerns about whether the proposed ballot language would confuse voters by trying to cover too much ground.
On Monday, Wilson said she’d like to see the proposed ballot language become a little more precise, but she’d still support moving it forward.
“This is a place where we have the opportunity to use a legislative tool that still belongs to us,” Wilson said.
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In the end, Scott moved to table the question for the time being.
Demings said there isn’t enough consensus on the current board to advance the question for 2026.
“God bless the future board, to maybe bring it back in 2028,” he said.
“Eventually, we'll get there. This community will get there,” Demings said. “I believe in this community. I believe in the people who work here. I believe in the compassion that you all exhibit every single board meeting. We'll get there at the right time.”
