Collier County museum advocates push to maintain share of tourist tax dollars

Volunteers and an advocacy group for Collier County's museums are fighting to keep the museums included in the county's bed tax.

Blacksmith Harland Fisher smiles as he works during the 27th Old Florida Festival at the Collier County Museum in Naples, on Saturday, Nov. 19, 2016. This annual family-style adventure brings together over 100 of the state's finest historical reenactors, craftworkers and living history presenters to recreate over ten centuries of everyday life in Southwest Florida.

The county's five museums, which run the Old Florida Festival every year, have been funded almost entirely by the bed tax for years. That funding has returned to the chopping block now that county commissioners have decided to spend about $2.5 million more a year replenishing and protecting county beaches.

That money has to come from somewhere. 

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Jacob Winge, president of Friends of the Collier County Museums, doesn't want to see it come from museums.

"We've been through this before," Winge said. "The sentiment seems to have always been let's take as much as we can from the museums."

Museums never will be tourism drivers like the county's beaches or nature preserves. But they play a fundamental role, Winge said.

"When it's raining and you can't go to the zoo or kayak in Rookery Bay, you go to the museum," he said.

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Commissioners will decide Tuesday how to split the money reaped from the bed tax, which is expected to raise an estimated $26.25 million next year. The money will be split primarily among advertising, constructing a sports complex, replenishing beaches and running the county's museums.

The museums receive about $2.5 million a year.

Commissioners are all in agreement to spend about $2.5 million more a year to widen the county's beaches and better protect them from erosion. A good chunk of that increase, an estimated $1.5 million, will come from an increase in the bed tax next year from 4 percent to 5 percent.

The other $1 million will come from a cut in advertising money or a reduction in museum funding.

If museums are cut from the bed tax, the county could fund them with money in its general tax pool, which primarily comes from property taxes. But the county manager's office has been reluctant to make that switch because that would leave the county with less money for the county's parks, roads, bridges and general operations.

If the museum funding stays in the bed tax, the county would have less money to advertise.

Museum funding is tied to a percentage of the bed tax, so as more tourists come to the county and pay the bed tax, the museum's budget increases.

Commissioner Burt Saunders said he would like to see whether the museums could live on a fixed budget at their current levels, so that any future increases in the bed tax could go toward advertising.

Winge said museums could agree to a cap as long as they can continue to draw from bed tax revenue.

"We could support a cap," he said. "We just don't think the funding will be there if they try to move it over to the general fund. These museums are a county entity and they deserve to have an adequate budget."