The Orange County Commission on Tuesday accepted the recommendations of its Tourism Development Tax advisory task force and agreed to return at a future meeting to consider how to allocate hundreds of millions of dollars in expected revenues over the next five years.
In a 26-page report, the task force recommended funding for four county initiatives that earned especially high marks from the commission, and funding for eight more as allowed by available funding.
County staff warned that there probably won’t be enough money to fund all of those projects while maintaining funding reserves generated by the 6% tax on hotel and vacation rental stays.
Commissioners will come back for a further discussion and vote at a future meeting.
The report
After a preliminary set of meetings earlier this month recommended against a handful of applicants, including nearly $1 billion to fund a Major League Baseball stadium in Orlando, the remaining applications were ranked according to a sentiment survey completed by members of the task force.
The group’s report recommended first funding four initiatives, all of which would be run by the county.
Topping out that list was $20 million to be awarded annually to small- and medium-sized grant projects by the Tourism Development Tax Application Review Committee over the next five years.
The second-highest rated proposal came from the county’s own Planning, Environmental & Developmental Services Department to spend $5 million per year for a “Tourism-Focused Lake and River Restoration Program” for more than 100 miles of public access river and lakeshores throughout the county.
Third and fourth were the creation of a competitive county grant program for ecotourism that would be funded at $10 million annually, and increasing funding to the county’s Arts and Cultural Affairs grant program by up to $5 million annually.
Eatonville development
The task force next recommended advancing a pair of projects to develop cultural centers in the Historic Town of Eatonville.
Dr. Phillips Inc., a charitable organization, is seeking $60 million to establish an Eatonville Museum of Culture & History at the historic Hungerford Property, the site of Florida’s first school for Black children. The task force is recommending advancing funding for that project ahead of the seven other projects in its report.
The Association to Preserve the Eatonville Community, Inc., asked for $53 million to fund the Zora Neale Hurston International Museum of Arts, Heritage and Culture. The task force recommended referring the group’s funding request to another committee.
Other recommendations
The task force’s last specific recommendation was $22.5 million to the Creative City Project, the nonprofit that organizes the IMMERSE festival in downtown Orlando.
The remaining five funding requests were as follows, according to the report:
- $25 million to the 8Waves Corporation to construct a 20,000-square-foot children’s museum.
- $20 million for the Orange Audubon Society to create an Orange Audubon Natural History Center on the 69.5-acre grounds of a former greenhouse nursery in Apopka.
- $750 million to expand the Dr. Phillips Center for the Performing Arts campus in downtown Orlando.
- $54 million for a new parking garage on the campus of Camping World Stadium.
- $30 million for the City of Ocoee to expand its Forest Lake golf club “into a multi-use recreational and entertainment destination.”
The task force did not recommend advancing a $119 million funding request to upgrade athletics facilities at the University of Central Florida, nor did it recommend a $523 million request to expand the Orlando Convention Center.
Limited funds
During a presentation to the board, county assistant fiscal and business services manager Danielle Phillippe said that funding all 12 of those projects at the requested funding levels would draw the county tourism fund below its reserve target of $300 million.
The commission would need to cut funding to some programs, or delay or spread out funding over a bigger time frame, to avoid that problem, she said.
Because the report is preliminary, Phillippe added, county staff don’t yet have a good idea of whether any of those organizations could receive less money without jeopardizing their project entirely.
Questions of process
Nearly every member of the commission raised questions about how the task force made its decisions and conducted its evaluation over a roughly four-week timespan, and at one point, half of the body said they were dissatisfied with the recommendations.
For example, Commissioner Kelly Semrad complained that the commission used recent improvements to the Savannah Convention Center in Georgia to estimate the economic impacts of expanding the Orlando Convention Center.
District 2 interim Commissioner Mike Crabb said that the use of a survey made the process too subjective, because “we now… get feelings involved in it. … But I don’t have the true data or a ranking list based on that matrix that tells me this is why they rank this way.”
“For my task force folks,” Crabb said, “please don't take my position as not being thankful for your work, but I do not agree with the recommendations.”
Commissioner Mayra Uribe questioned how the task force recommended the $750 million expansion for the Dr. Phillips Center to expand and upgrade its downtown Orlando campus, while also denying a $119 million request from the University of Central Florida.
Task force co-chair Eddy Moratin explained that the group gave priority to the Dr. Phillips Center over the UCF sports facility improvements because the last tourism development tax task force gave funding to UCF over the Phillips Center.
When Uribe suggested reviving the UCF proposal before the commission, against the recommendation of the task force, Mayor Jerry Demings pushed back.
“What you're trying to do is change what the task force recommended,” Demings said. “This isn't about trying to, in my humble opinion, negotiate one up or one down at this point because you have a personal preference here. This is what the task force has already done. … You're trying to take this in a direction that is not necessary at this time.”
A final pair of motions
As that schism threatened to upend the work session, Demings reminded the commission that the actual disbursement of funding would come later, but the decision on Tuesday’s agenda was simple.
“Our role today is to either accept a report or not,” said Demings. “The details of these individual projects still has to be worked out. I said when we started that we will have to likely modify in order to meet the comptroller's recommended guideline of a $300 million I’m going to say floor. … We do not have all of those details here today.”
Demings reminded the body that “acceptance of the Orange County Tourist Development Tax Citizens Advisory Task Force final report” — the recommended motion on the table — would not affect the body’s ultimate decision on how to fund applicants, which would come at a later meeting.
Whitney Evers, an attorney for the county, punctuated that point for the board.
“One of the issues with either accepting the final report or the recommendations today is that that puts a period at the end of the task force,” Evers said. “These folks who have volunteered need to know that their work is done, and that's part of what accepting that recommendation today is doing.”
The commission eventually made a motion to that effect, except it moved to accept the task force’s final “recommendation” rather than “report” — a change that Demings offered at Scott’s request.
That motion passed unanimously.
The commission then moved to the question of which requests it would ask staff to review and present to the board at a future meeting.
Commissioner Mike Scott suggested that the board review all 20 applicants over concerns that the task force changed its evaluation criteria mid-stream, unfairly excluding some projects.
“The reason we did this was to depoliticize the process, to take politicians out and let the citizens make recommendations,” Demings said. “The citizens have done that. Now all of a sudden politicians want to say, ‘Well, I didn't like it.’”
After staff explained that those criteria didn’t change, Scott relented, and the board moved to direct staff to move forward with the projects recommended by the task force.
That motion also passed unanimously.
