Backers of Conservation Collier, a popular land acquisition and management program that keeps sensitive lands from being developed, won big Thursday night.
By a three-to-two vote, the Collier County Board of County Commissioners voted to approve it's 2025-26 budget — leaving some $34 million in funding for Conservation Collier.
Prior to the vote, Commissioner Chris Hall proposed gutting the land acquisition fund by $25 million this coming fiscal year.
“I’m not the Conservation Collier boogeyman,” Hall said Thursday night, "I don't care what the paper says. I don't care what the news says. I've got some fiscal common sense. "
Hall is known for his hard-line stance that taxes should not be raised year after year.
Sometimes he wins. But not Thursday night when his proposal to greatly reduce Conservation Collier's millage rate didn’t gain enough traction.
Hall's proposal did draw attention from program supporters such as Charlotte Newell.
Newell reminded Hall that voters approved a referendum about being taxed to preserve sensitive lands from being developed.
“Why do you think that it is appropriate to cut a program that has 77 percent support of Collier residents and was voted in favor off our years before you even moved here? This is our heritage. This is our home and it is important that we continue to protect it," she said.
The board has the authority to set the funds millage rate as much as .25. It went lower setting it at .2096 for the coming fiscal year which begins Oct. 1.
That equates to $84 in taxes this coming year for someone with a home with a taxable value of $400,000.
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