The Otero County Commission is considering a public hearing in June on a possible one-eighth of 1 percent gross-receipts tax increase to help fund the proposed Spaceport America, the Alamogordo Daily News reported.

The hearing would be to determine how best to word a tax-increase proposal that would go on the November ballot, the Daily News said.

Otero County officials had agreed to hold a vote on the tax if the tax passed in Sierra County, where the state's first commercial spaceport would be located, the paper reported.

Sierra County voters last month overwhelmingly approved a spaceport tax increase, and Dona Ana County voters earlier passed the tax by a narrower margin, the Daily News said.

Together, the three counties would create a special tax district to help pay for the $58 million spaceport, but state officials have said that with 97 percent of the funding now in place, even a "no" vote in Otero County wouldn't kill the project, according to the paper.

"It's just you wouldn't have as good an infrastructure when you don't have that final 3 or 4 percent," Steve Landeene, executive director of the New Mexico Spaceport Authority that will own and operate the facility, said in an interview last month.

Otero County Commissioner Clarissa McGinn said Wednesday that she is personally opposed to the proposed tax but thought a public hearing would help determine how much public support is there for the tax, the Daily News reported. 

Your Name:

Your Email Address:

Rate this article:
Poor Great

Comment:

BOLD

"QUOTE"

UNDERLINE