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Tourism council backs $750,000 recommendation and orders economic-impact study for Chappie James plaza
Summary
After debate over whether tourist-development tax can fund construction, the Escambia County Tourist Development Council voted 8–1 to forward a $750,000 recommendation to the county commission and to commission an independent economic-impact study before further action.
The Escambia County Tourist Development Council voted 8–1 on Feb. 18 to forward a recommendation to the Board of County Commissioners to allocate $750,000 for the Chappie James Memorial Plaza and to commission an independent economic-impact study to quantify the project’s tourism impact.
The measure followed more than an hour of discussion about whether the tourist-development tax (TDT) may be used for construction. Council member James Reeves introduced the idea of increasing the council’s prior $750,000 recommendation to the $1 million the project’s organizers later requested, saying the original amount had been set years earlier and costs have risen. “If we’re gonna approve it, a motion to make it $1,000,000 would probably be in order,” Reeves said when he moved to increase the recommendation.
That motion to increase the recommendation to $1,000,000 failed…
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