Universal road may hit taxpayers

Maxwell: County able to use non-tourism tax dollars, but could boost your taxes as well.

Last weekend, I dropped some cash at Universal Orlando.

It was my son’s birthday. He wanted to visit Halloween Horror Nights with a friend.

So we plunked down $300 for a hotel room, plus money for meals, tickets and parking, all so the demogorgons from “Stranger Things” could scare the boys out of their athletic shorts.

We did so happily.

I’m less happy with Orange County’s plan to spend $125 million on a road Universal says it needs to open its next theme park, Epic Universe.

This plan has several flaws. For starters, you could argue Universal — whose parent company posted $11.7 billion in profits last year from families like mine — should pay for its own darn road, since the park is clearly the prime beneficiary. (So much so that Universal is in charge of construction. That’s unusual.)

Second, if we’re going to subsidize businesses, I’d rather subsidize businesses with high wages.

Third, there’s the price tag. It’s Hulk-sized. After the state throws in another $16 million and Universal pays $174 million, it’s more than $300 million for a 1.7-mile stretch of pavement. That’s more, per mile, than the mammoth 10-lane, I-4 Ultimate project.

Fourth, there’s the way the deal is structured. As the Sentinel recently reported, if construction comes in under budget, the theme park — not taxpayers — gets most, if not all, of the savings.

Think about those last two things for a moment. We have a surprisingly high sticker price. But if Universal — who’s in charge of design and construction — builds this thing for a more reasonable price, Universal gets the bulk of the savings. (Easy fix to that one: The agreement should say both sides share in savings, proportionately.)

Still, none of those four concerns is my top one. No, that has to do with the kind of tax dollars Orange County plans to spend on this project — and that a hike on your taxes may be on the way.

In fact, for the sake of argument, let’s just assume the rest of this deal is spectacular. Assume every concern I raised above is total nonsense — that the road’s a great and fair deal for our economy and taxpayers.

This deal still stinks — because Orange County isn’t using the money it should for this project.

See, Orange County has a pot of taxes specifically earmarked for tourism-related spending — around $300 million a year in hotel taxes.

But instead of using that tourism-related money for this tourism-related road, Orange County wants to use other tax dollars … and yet also wants you to raise