A.G. Gancarski
After three months of a half-cent sales tax passed to ensure the ongoing quality of St. Johns County schools, the trend is clear.
Revenue is surging, month over month, a trend apparently driven in large part by tourism.
March saw $1,537,660 collected, money that will go to much-needed capital projects for schools in the fast-growing county directly to the south of Jacksonville.
January brought $1,124,769 into county coffers, and February’s total of $1,255,759 was stronger than that.
All told, $3,918,188 has been collected; that nearly $4 million is trending favorably compared to the original projections of $13 million a year in new revenue.
Beth Sweeny, governmental relations coordinator for the St. Johns County School District, said she was “pleasantly surprised” by the “encouraging trend” of revenue uptick from the county’s half-cent school sales tax that went into effect in January.
Expectations were that January and February would be slower months,a great deal of the month-to-month flux is driven by tourist patterns. It was estimated that 40 percent of collections, in aggregate, are from tourism.
