Peter Schorsch
I’m new here, so give me a little slack.
I’m also from St. Pete, and while I know I live in the best area of Florida, I can tell you those of us from Florida’s better coast have always envied the amount your tourist development tax generates. I mean, it’s up to, what, $225 million a year? That’s real money, and when the Wall Street bond guys get ahold of it, you can generate a couple of billion dollars in net present value.
See, I may be new here, but I also understand a little bit about municipal finances.
So let me get this straight, Scott Maxwell, the venerable columnist who protects Orlando’s children and widows from sure despair, says hoteliers are scared that state law will change and are offering a sucker deal.
I don’t know enough about Orlando’s tourist dollar wars to be sure he is correct, so I asked around.
Here’s what I’ve learned.
Mayor Teresa Jacobs is tough, smart and doesn’t like surprises. Have you folks not been paying attention the last five years? Don’t spring a major money deal on the woman who has a finance degree and regularly picks apart the most complicated budgets the and spends untold hours poring over financial statements.
Even a schmuck like me from St. Pete could have told you that.
Then there’s Orlando’s Mayor Buddy Dyer. What Buddy wants, Buddy seems to get. But this isn’t anything new; the County has been bending over for the City of Orlando for decades.
Here’s the way it works in your part of the world (in case you haven’t noticed); Mayor of Orlando, and I mean any Mayor of Orlando from Frederick to Hood, and now Dyer says, “I want an arena for a basketball team … an upgrade for the Citrus Bowl … a performing arts center, but I don’t have the money, so can you finance my downtown Orlando project, Orange County?”
The County grouses about it for a little, complains about the cost, but in the end, it funds it. I heard that one former County Mayor said their job was to be “the banker.”
Pretty cool if you are the Mayor of the City of Orlando: Just come up with ideas to make your City more livable for your citizens and call up your banker for a free loan.
Friday, in what can only be described as a tense meeting, Mayor Jacobs essentially stopped the plan of everyone in the community — the hoteliers, the tourism interests, the arts community, Mayor Dyer. Everybody.
Now Maxwell is probably applauding Jacobs because his small-minded idea is to use tourist tax dollars to fund police services or emergency vehicles or some such bureaucratic idea. I hate to rain on Maxwell’s parade, but isn’t that what property taxes are supposed to pay for?
I’m all for your community using tourist money how you want, but if you only give it to the government to do those things it’s already supposed to do, doesn’t that just become a bottomless pit?
I suspect what will happen is Jacobs will go over the budget, offer a lower amount with fewer bells and whistles, and sometime soon everybody will pat each other on the back. They’ll hold a self-congratulatory news conference and talk about how much they love working with each other.
Am I right?
Because I don’t actually live in Orlando, let me offer a thought — albeit a crazy one — but nonetheless a thought. Why doesn’t Jacobs and the Orange County Commission do what they’ve never done before and dream their own dreams about how to spend the money to make the lives of their residents better.
I know, I know, the Convention Center is an economic powerhouse that creates thousands of jobs, and that’s what you do — keep putting more money into the Convention Center, making it bigger and better. I guess you could plate the toilets in gold. But why not go a step further and think outside the Convention Center box.
Why doesn’t Orange County come up with its list of projects like the Mayor of Orlando does? Why does the County always put itself in the position of being the boring old banker? All they do is say, “Yes” or “No” to ideas from other people. That’s not leadership. If you wanted to take that approach, just punt all those ideas to your elected Comptroller and let her negotiate a better deal.
Because if all you ever want is a better deal and not a new vision, then who cares?
But, hey, I’m from St. Pete, so take your time.
