The onePulse Foundation left Orange County a parting gift when it went belly up: an unpaid property tax bill.
The $50,000-plus obligation accompanied a piece of land on 438 W. Kaley St. that the group seeking to commemorate the Pulse nightclub manager bought with a county grant of tourist tax funds, and then handed over to the county in late 2023 when it announced its inability to build a promised museum on the site.
“The Foundation has indicated they do not have the funds to pay the property taxes and, therefore, do not intend to do so,” wrote Roseanne Harrington, chief of staff to Orange County Mayor Jerry Demings, in a March 15 memo to the County Commission.
Harrington said the county must pay the 2023 tax bill before April 1 or incur penalty payments (it has already missed the opportunity for an early-payment reduction of about $2,000). The commission is expected to vote on the matter Tuesday.
Over its seven-year lifespan, onePulse raised only a fraction of the money needed to build a memorial/museum project whose estimated cost ballooned past $100 million. It spent most of the proceeds on design and consulting costs, land purchases and its own operating expenses, in addition to presenting scholarships and annual remembrance events.
The county will get back about 20 percent of the $51,828.83 it pays to the tax collector because of the way property taxes are distributed among government agencies. Local schools and the city of Orlando will receive the bulk of the haul. The land is assessed at just over $2.7 million.
On March 13, the Orlando Sentinel published “How onePulse broke Orlando’s heart,” detailing the poor decision making, internal strife and overreach that doomed the well-intentioned effort. Read it here.
Sentinel staff writer Stephen Hudak contributed to this report.
