Zembower asks for audit of Winter Springs’ use of penny sales tax funds
In the wake of state lawmakers recently ordering an audit of Winter Springs, a Seminole commissioner now has asked the county’s Clerk of Court and Comptroller’s office to look into how the city spent millions of dollars in sales tax money on bridge repairs and other infrastructure projects.
“This is just to try to determine if they received the [sales tax] money to do bridge work and was it done and was it done properly. Or even if it was done at all,” Commissioner Jay Zembower said. “I think those are answers that the taxpayers deserve.”
On Feb. 15, Zembower sent a letter to Seminole’s Clerk of Court and Comptroller Grant Maloy requesting his office review the amount of money Winter Springs received from the 2014 penny sales tax referendum and the expenditures on capital projects, such as bridges, roads and trails.
“This request is based on the ongoing inquiries and claims from citizens as to the maintenance or lack thereof of bridges that incurred damage during Hurricane Ian in late September 20, 2022,” Zembower said in his letter.
He also noted that residents have voiced concerns to him about the delay in repairs to two city bridges at Winter Springs Boulevard over Bear Creek and on Northern Way over Howell Creek after the structures were flooded and closed for weeks following Hurricane Ian.
Winter Springs City Manager Shawn Boyle said the deluge from Ian, which dropped 17 inches of rain within a day, flooded the road leading to the bridges and eroded the ground underneath.
“It really was an absolutely catastrophic storm event,” he said. “None of the systems are designed for that. … The bridges did not fail. The approaches to the bridges failed.”
On Thursday, Bill Carroll, inspector general for the county’s Clerk of Court and Comptroller’s Office, sent a letter to Boyle notifying him that it was launching an audit of the revenues and expenses associated with the sales tax money the city received.
The audit would entail a detailed accounting of the expenses paid out from the city’s infrastructure fund, status of proposed projects which have been completed, and how much sales tax money earmarked for Winter Springs is left over.
“Our objective for the audit will be to determine if the city has adequate and effective administrative controls over the use of funds received via the 2014 one-cent sales tax allocation,” Carroll wrote in his letter.
Boyle said Friday that his staff plans to fully comply with the audit and had already started assembling the information for Carroll.
In 2014, Seminole voters approved a one-cent hike in the state sales tax with the revenues going toward infrastructure projects and school capital improvements for the next 10 years. Of the more than $101 million collected countywide last fiscal year, the county received about $56 million of that amount and Winter Springs was given $3 million, according to county documents. The school district received about $25 million.
Boyle estimated that the city received about $16 million in total from the sales tax since 2015. On average, the city receives about $2 million a year. However, the amount was higher this past fiscal year because of recent inflation.
Boyle added the city plans to rebuild the city’s bridges using federal infrastructure money and county sales tax revenues. The city has already made $600,000 worth of repairs to the bridges’ support structures in recent years.
The county audit should be completed in about six months, Maloy said. He added that Zembower made the request as a commissioner and resident and not on behalf of the board of county commissioners.
“We will work with them,” Maloy said about Winter Springs staff. “It could be that we just make recommendations.”
Last month, Florida lawmakers at the urging of state Sen. Jason Brodeur ordered an audit of Winter Springs after residents voiced concerns about the operation of the city’s water and wastewater systems and a massive sewage spill into a neighborhood pond.
The state operational audit, estimated to be completed by mid-2024, would take a look at Winter Springs’ contract with Veolia Water North America for its water and wastewater operations, and whether the city is complying with its state-issued water consumptive use permit.
Zembower said his request for an audit is not tied to the state audit. Still, he wants to know if the city used sales tax money for bridge repairs.
“Was it quite honestly, Mother Nature just dropping too much water there?” he said. “People need to get an answer. My hopes are that the money was spent and that this was just an unanticipated event and maybe these bridges need to be rebuilt in their entirety. … The citizens deserve some level of comfort in knowing that the bridges were repaired in using the infrastructure tax money or they need to have the knowledge that maybe they were repaired and not done properly, or perhaps not done at all.”
