Local voters will be asked Nov. 4 to decide whether two new sales taxes are a good idea.

One is couched in an amendment to the state constitution. If voters pass Amendment 8, municipalities would be able to levy a sales tax to increase funding for their community colleges.

The colleges’ value to the community in providing affordable job training is indisputable, and recent cuts in their funding because of the Legislature’s property tax rollback certainly restrict their ability to provide that value. But it’s not a constitutional matter.

The other proposal for a new sales tax will face voters in St. Johns County. County commissioners there want a 1 cent sales tax increase to pay for land conservation and road improvement.

The county leaders want to use about half of the $120 million they expect to gain from this new tax in five years to buy land to prevent development. This is money taken from everyone to take property off the tax rolls, which doesn’t make economic sense.

Sales taxes are an easy way to replenish depleted government coffers, but now we’re in an economic crisis, it’s not the time to start levying new ones.

Levying a sales tax for a single line-item in a council budget opens the door for future escalation of sales taxes for other narrow purposes. Sales taxes give too much control to local governments to fund projects at their whim and allows government to get bigger.

The St. Johns County proposal pales in comparison with the Better Jacksonville Plan. That plan, financed by a half-cent sales tax increase, created more than a billion dollars of valuable new infrastructure — from roads to sports facilities to libraries — and thousands of jobs.

An overwhelming majority of Jacksonville voters passed the sales-tax proposal for The Better Jacksonville Plan after an extensive city effort to educate voters about exactly what the money would be used for. Little education has accompanied the two proposals before voters on Nov. 4.

We say no to both Amendment 8 and the St. Johns County commissioners’ ballot proposal of a 1 cent sales tax increase.

Jacksonville Business Journal