SARASOTA COUNTY — Like anyone in the Sunshine State who’s come into some money, Sarasota County wants to buy beachfront property.
A 19 percent jump in the value of taxable property will bring extra cash into county coffers next year. As a result, the county could use $10 million of this money to buy boat ramps, public beach and parks. Or, the county could make bigger purchases by borrowing up to $45 million against future property taxes.
It’s been at least 10 years since the county bought a boat ramp or beach property. But escalating prices, particularly for waterfront property, and the influx of funds seems to have sparked a sense of urgency among county commissioners to address, in particular, the lack of boat ramps.
The emphasis on adding to the county’s supply of boat ramps is good news to Rick Foster, who has been boating out of Centennial Park for 20 years.
“The weekend’s crazy here,” said Foster, noting that lines can be an hour long on holiday weekends. “I’ve seen ramp rage. I’ve seen fistfights.”
No wonder. Sarasota County has more than 22,000 registered boats, but only 16,000 moorings, leaving those relying on public ramps vying for only 507 parking spaces for vehicles with boat trailers at 11 county-operated ramps.
Three more boat ramps are needed to meet immediate demand and more will be needed in years to come, according to the master plan for the county Parks and Recreation Department.
It’s the future that has county commissioners worried. During negotiations to buy a pair of marinas along Phillippi Creek last year, appraisers told county officials that prices were rising more than 40 percent a year on waterfront property, said Commissioner Nora Patterson.
Even though the county’s tax base is growing rapidly, prices are climbing faster, so the time to act is now, Patterson said. Commissioners found out the hard way that it takes a big wallet to compete for waterfront property. After negotiating for a year for the Phillippi Creek properties and making a $7.8 million offer, the county got outbid by private investors who paid $8.4 million.
This month commissioners will start making decisions on how to spend about $36 million in increased property tax collections they expect in 2006. The new money is coming from property sales and higher assessments, which boosted the assessed value of county property from $38.8 billion this year to $46.2 billion next year.
At least $11 million is earmarked for a 6 percent cut in property tax rates. Even after the cut, the county would still have $24 million to spend on new initiatives. The most frequently discussed initiative is creating a Waterfront Acquisition Fund. Commissioners have suggested that $10 million could be put into that fund initially.
Since the county expects the increase in property tax revenues to be permanent, commissioners are considering putting aside $10 million a year for five years, which would allow them to borrow $45 million now to buy property. That would give the county a ready pot of money for acquisitions.
Another option would be to dedicate property taxes to the waterfront fund. That could be done through a referendum that commissioners may put on the ballot as early as this November, which would raise the borrowing limit for county’s Environmentally Sensitive Land Protection Program.
Commissioners might discuss adding a tax for the Waterfront Acquisition Fund to that referendum, said Commissioner Shannon Staub.
While commissioners have until Sept. 26 to pass the county’s budget, they’ll have to decide by the end of the month how much of the increased tax collections will go toward tax cuts and how much will go toward new programs, Staub said.
Other initiatives vying for the funds are a proposal to spend $7 million improving county facilities, boosting Sarasota County Area Transit’s budget by $5 million and using $5 million to complete the funding of the Sarasota-to-Venice Rails-to-Trails project.
Boat ramps are particularly needed in the northern half of the county, said Parks and Recreation Director John McCarthy. Most of the county’s boat ramps are in the southern part of the county, while a majority of people using the ramps are in the northern half.
Buying existing private ramps is expensive and seeking permits to build new ramps could be a lengthy process, McCarthy said. But the county could leverage the money it sets aside, nearly doubling it, he said, noting that applications to a state grant fund, the Florida Communities Trust, could reimburse the county for 45 percent of its costs.
“There’s interest in both the beach and boat ramps, but we’re focused right now on the boat ramp side of things,” McCarthy said.
By DOUG SWORD
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