The county commissioners have brought back the bridge tax to raise more money for repairs — and in the process spurred another argument over who wanted what and why.
The tax won’t generate much money — about $20,000 — and Monday night it basically served as a point of disagreement between commission president Kevin Meyer and county council president Steve Thais over who wanted Economic Development Income Tax money designated for bridge repairs.
Thais said the commissioners had wanted EDIT money set aside for the repairs, while Meyer said that wasn’t true — the commissioners wanted money for the highway department in general, which is suffering because of a decline in state gasoline-tax revenues.
Meyer argued that EDIT money shouldn’t be used to build bridges, saying doing that was “robbing Peter to pay Paul.”
“We took $1 million from one tax fund and we’re building new bridges as we can, but EDIT was not designed to build bridges,” he said.
Thais said bridge building was economic development. He said the money had to be taken from somewhere, and that taking money from one tax fund and appropriating it elsewhere was “the nature of the beast.”
Reinstating the bridge tax doesn't mean property owners will be paying more taxes but that a small portion of money otherwise designated for the General Fund would go to the bridge fund.
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http://suncommercial.com/articles/2012/07/16/news/local_news/doc5004cade64c85497576284.txt
