Manatee commission, school board to discuss sales tax referendum Tuesday

MANATEE -- Manatee County commissioners and school board members could decide Tuesday whether they want to place a sales tax initiative together on November's ballot.

The two entities will have a joint work session at 1:30 p.m. Tuesday in the Center Hall North of the Bradenton Area Convention Center, One Haben Blvd., Palmetto. No formal action is expected at the workshop.

"This workshop is to discuss what is the best way for the school board and county commission to work together to achieve community goals," according to agenda materials.

The joint meeting stemmed from the commission's action April 26 to continue discussing the Citizens Financial Structure Advisory Board's recommendation that a half-cent sales tax would address the county's funding issues. The school board's current half-cent sales tax, which was approved by voters in 2002, sunsets in 2017.

Questions have already cropped up in both groups as to whether jointly pursuing the issue would jeopardize the funding. Neither the county commission nor the school board has voted to place the sales tax referendum on the November ballot.

If either group wants to put a referendum before voters in the November 2016 election, they need to send a resolution to the Supervisor of Elections Office by Aug. 22.

"The meeting will be taped by METV and televised Tuesday evening on MGA, which can be seen at mymanatee.org/mga and locally on Bright House channel 644, Frontier channel 30 and Comcast channel 20," according to a news release sent by the county.

Claire Aronson, Manatee County reporter, can be reached at 941-745-7024. Follow her on Twitter@Claire_Aronson.

This story was originally published May 2, 2016 at 6:05 PM with the headline "Manatee commission, school board to discuss sales tax referendum Tuesday ."