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SUMMER/FALL 2016 INFLUENCE | 81 No one in Orange County could ever have imagined in 2006 that the vote they were about to take, to increase the county’s tourism development tax and redistribute it to some then-controversial purposes, would one day become critical in binding the region’s deepest wounds — and in binding the community. But there it is. In the days following Orlando’s darkest moment, in June, when Omar Mateen killed 49 and wounded 53 in the Pulse nightclub, it was the tourist tax that provided the venues for Orlando, Orange County and all of Central Florida to come together to grieve and heal and unite. The Amway Center, built with that tourist money for the city’s NBA basketball team, the Orlando Magic, concerts and other entertainment, served as the site for President Barack Obama’s and Vice President Joe Biden’s private expressions of sympathy to the survivors and families of the Pulse nightclub massacre. The Camping World Stadium (formerly known as the Florida Citrus Bowl,) — overhauled, expanded and modernized with that tourist money for football, soccer, tractor pulls and stadium rock — became the home of the city’s relief efforts for hundreds of family members of the dead and wounded. And the Dr. Phillips Center for the Performing Arts, built with that tourist money for Broadway plays and other cultural performances, became the hallowed ground where Orlando’s LGBT community and greater community came together to hold hands in grief, remembrance, love and unity, hosting several vigils and accepting thousands of hand-delivered, anonymous tributes. Orange County Mayor Teresa Jacobs thinks back to her vote in 2006 as a county commissioner, and she all but shudders at the thought that she was the swing vote deciding to use the tax to build the venues, and could have voted to kill them. She also thinks back to her attendance at a vigil inside the performing arts center a week after the Pulse massacre. Jacobs recalls it as the moment that she realized, as a human being, she personally needed some healing, and was finding a start there that night, perhaps along with everyone else there. “When I sat there and just took in the support from this community, I realized if we didn’t have places for the community to come together, we wouldn’t have community,” she said. Not bad for a tax that had — still has — the power to divide the most powerful players in Orlando politics. As recently as April, Jacobs and Orlando Mayor Buddy Dyer found themselves on harshly opposing sides of a new plan to allocate the proceeds. As recently as June, Jacobs found herself in a bitter, name-calling fight with the man sometimes referred to as the Mayor of I-Drive, hotel magnate Harris Rosen. And, two weeks later, Jacobs was winning a hard-fought victory, re-establishing herself as the one in most control of the tax, yet still a long way from resolving powerful disagreements with Dyer and other tourism interests. After all, it’s a tourism tax — 6 percent on all hotel room bills in Orange County. Historically, and still in many ways, its aim is to promote tourism. Cases can and are made that Orlando’s arena, performing arts center, and especially the stadium add to the tourism draw. But those arguments are justifications for what everyone knows are really venues built for the community, not the tourists. That tax’s power comes from its unmatched bounty in Orange County, which The Green in Orange County When the tourism tax take tops $225 million, it’s a sure bet local pols and power players will butt heads about where and how the money is spent BY SCOTT POWERS PHOTO: Bill Morrow/Flickr CENTRAL FLORIDA


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