OUTER BANKS, N.C. — The ballot in Dare County didn't just have candidates on it. There were also a few questions related to taxes, including a quarter-cent sales tax increase from 6.75% to 7%.
That increase was expected to bring in more than $6 million a year, and Dare County leaders planned to use it to address $56.9 million in parks and recreation priority projects.
"Absent something happening different, it'll be decades before we could do all that," said Dare County Manager Bobby Outten.
Outten says Dare County doesn't have the funding to address a project list of this magnitude in the short term. Putting the quarter-cent sales tax increase on the ballot was something county leaders had hoped would make completing these projects in the coming years a reality.
"$60 million worth of projects is a lot of projects, and there's not going to be any time where we have that kind of money available," said Outten.
The referendum failed on Election Day, with more than 60% of voters saying no. That means that the future of funding for projects like synthetic turf for athletic fields at the Nags Head Soccer Complex, Lions Club Center building renovations, Fessenden Center building renovations, Youth Center building expansion, playground improvements, additional splash pad installations and everything in between is now unknown.
"We were committed to take a 20-year note to be able to do that for Parks and Rec, and now we're not able to do it. So, it's very disappointing," said Bob Woodard, chairman of the Dare County Board of Commissioners.
Woodard is talking about the loan that Dare County planned to take out if the referendum had passed. That loan would have allowed the county to borrow the money needed to address the entire list of projects in the next three years.
"We had things planned for the northern beaches, Hatteras Island, Roanoke Island. This would have been really a home run for us," said Woodard.
News 3 went out Monday to talk to voters about their feelings on the tax increase failing. One told News 3 that he was fed up with his taxes going up. Another said, echoing something we had heard before the vote, that people didn't really know what they were voting for.
That reasoning is something Woodard told News 3 he didn't understand.
"We had talked about it for months and months at every single one of our board meetings, we put out a flyer explaining what the money would go for, we had a plan that showed what the money would go for, we had a plan to borrow the money that would take care of all of those projects that we had in place, we held three public meetings to say where it was going," said Woodard.
News 3 also talked to one resident who voted in favor of the tax and said that, though it did not pass, she hopes it doesn't impact the future of parks and recreation.
"For now, the status quo will remain, and we'll keep trying to keep and maintain things that we have, and it'll be difficult to grow it very much into the future," said Outten.
Woodard also says he doesn't know if the county will ever put the referendum back on the ballot and that voters made their position clear.
"I don't think the board's going to put this back on the table for a vote. I mean, the public clearly spoke. It was 60% against, 40% for, I don't see them voting for it again. We're just going to have to regroup and see if there's anything we can do, a little piece at a time," said Woodard.
County leaders previously said they expected more than 70% of the tax to be paid by tourists and that it would have cost the average person in the community about $14 a year.
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