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Conclusion The Indian River County Board of County Commissioners, on January 31, 1989 passed ordinance 89-6 calling for a county -wide referendum on the levy of the one cent sales tax to be held on Tuesday, March 14, 1989. Shortly thereafter the Optional Sales Tax was endorsed by every City within Indian River County. The Chamber ofCommerce, Taxpayers Association, Civic Association, Gifford Progressive League, Board ofRealtors, Association ofGeneral Contractors and the Treasure Coast Home Builders Association all endorsed the Optional Sales Tax at that time.The vo ters passed the Optional Sales Tax to go into effect June 1, 19S9. (60.3% voted for the tax and 39.7% voted against the tax.) When promoting the Optional Sales Tax, the Indian River County Board of County Commissioners put additional constraints on the use of the sales tax by promising that proceeds would be used only for essential capital projects that the County would have used tax dollars tocomplete (i.e. ad valorem, ,gas tax). It was also emphasized that in the future a good portion of Optional Sales Tax would go towards the purchase of right-of-way and roads to help offset the deficit in the Comprehensive Plan. An additional commitment was made to have a list of projects approved in five year intervals by the Board of County Commissioners in a public hearing. The planning of the third and final five year list of projects has been initiated (actually only 4 %2 years remain October 1, 1999 to May 31, 2004). The Budget Office requested a list of major projects from each department with the projected estimated cost, the year it will be needed, beginning construction date, length of constriction time and estimated annual operating costs for five years after project completion. On November 10, 1998 staff presented the Board of County Commissioners with a list of projects for preliminaryplanningpurposes. As expected, moreprojects were submitted than there was money available. A total of over $95 million in projects were submitted with only slightly over $50 million in estimated revenues for the final five year period. Staff has reviewed the requests and has recommended projects that were felt to be consistent with the or plan. During the review process, a significant emphasis was placed on the projects' affect onthe County's operating budget. Factors such as other potential revenue sources were taken into consideration when determining to fund the project from Optional Sales Tax. Examples of this are the Roads and Bridges where staff looked at the other revenue sources such as County Gas Tax, Constitutional Gas Tax, Optional Gas Tax and Road Impact Fees. Attached is a list of the projects for the Board of County Commissioners to consider funding from Optional Sales Tax for the third five years. JULY 69 1999 -35- BOOK F'AGE