Commissioners reject half-cent sales tax vote for Hernando road repairs

Hernando County commissioners shut down a November vote on a half-cent road tax, leaving no direct ballot choice for funding nearly $90 million in priority road work.

By a 3-2 vote on May 8, Steve Champion and Ryan Amsler backed placing the surtax before voters, while Brian Hawkins and John Allocco opposed it. The move stops a proposal that would have asked shoppers to pay an extra 0.5% at the register, or 50 cents on a $100 purchase, to help pay for road repairs and maintenance across the county.

County staff said the surtax would have produced just under $17.5 million a year. County Administrator Jeff Rogers told commissioners that shifting 0.2 mills from the General Fund to the Transportation Trust would bring in about $4 million annually, far less than the sales-tax option. Hawkins argued against adding another tax question to a November ballot that already includes a separate half-cent sales surtax proposal for the Sheriff’s Office Capital Improvement Plan.

The numbers behind the county’s road backlog are larger still. On April 16, commissioners had directed County Attorney Jon Jouben to draft the ordinance for the referendum after staff identified top-priority road projects totaling about $89.96 million. That list includes Barclay Road Phase 1 and 2 at $43,109,860, Kettering Road at $33,700,000, County Line Road at $10 million and the Ayers and Culbreath traffic circle at $3,150,000. A second priority group includes Sunshine Grove Road from Ken Austin to Hexam, estimated at $17,340,000, along with Cortez Oaks and Powell Road widening, which still do not have final cost estimates.

Rogers said Hernando has 1,578 paved miles, current gas-tax funding of $5,960,220 a year and average resurfacing costs of about $595,000 per mile. The county’s FY 2025-2026 Public Works budget lists expenses of $89,437,485 against revenues of $76,206,494, leaving a deficit of $13,230,991, while Transportation Trust spending is budgeted at $9,258,071.

The vote extends a familiar fight over how to pay for roads in a fast-growing county where traffic, school routes, emergency access and commercial corridors depend on pavement that keeps up with development. Hernando voters already rejected a road sales-tax referendum in 2024, and Allocco later said voters had turned down the idea twice, in 2022 and 2024.

The county has also leaned harder on impact fees. It commissioned a Stantec demonstrated-need analysis on April 24, 2024, after earlier Tindale Oliver studies were not adopted, then approved higher impact fees that took effect Dec. 2, 2024. Even so, commissioners remain split on whether roads should be paid for through another sales tax, a millage shift or some mix of both, and the repair backlog is still waiting for an answer.