West Palm Beach lines up projects awaiting sales tax

Priorities include parks, transportation and public safety.

WEST PA L M B E AC H — I n northern West Palm Beach, the 40-year-old Pleasant Park Community Center would be renovated, and Coleman Park’s Community Center would be expanded. Broadway would be renovated from 25th to 45th streets.

In the south end, Palmetto park would get a new playground and fence. In the west, there’d be a new public safety complex.

To the east, a long-awaited redesign of South Dixie Highway, with slower, narrower lanes and tree-lined sidewalks and medians, would begin.

These projects are on a list presented Monday of 15 spending priorities, should voters countywide approve a proposed one-cent sales tax increase Nov. 8. If the referendum question passes, 50 percent of the proceeds would go to the school board, 30 percent to Palm Beach County and 20 percent to the county municipalities, divvied out according to their populations.

City officials estimate the tax would bring an additional $60 million to West Palm Beach coffers over 10 years.

Under the plan the cit y commission approved Monday, West Palm would spend $15.5 million of it on parks and recreation; $32.5 million on transportation projects; and $7 million on public safety. Officials said that if the surtax wins voter approval, the city would use money from bond issues to start the projects rather than wait over 10 years for all the tax proceeds to come in.

The list of projects that would get surtax money “is in addition to the projects that we’re already doing,” Cit y Commissioner Paula Ryan noted.