Orange County agrees to pay nearly $52,000 of onePULSE Foundation’s unpaid property taxes

Ashlyn Webb
·2 min read

Orange County taxpayers are on the hook for onePULSE Foundation’s unpaid property taxes.

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Mayor Jerry Demings and the commission agreed to pay nearly $52,000 after onePULSE Foundation failed to pay its 2023 taxes on its property located on the corner of Kaley Street and Division Avenue. It was the intended site of the National Pulse Memorial and Museum.

Demings said the County had to pay out onePULSE’s debt because it couldn’t risk losing this property that it is working to acquire from the now-dissolved Foundation.

According to a staff letter to the mayor this month, if taxes were not paid on this by next Monday, April 1, the property would be delinquent.

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The county says the property is now worth about $4 million.

“We don’t want to run the risk of that property being put up on a tax auction block,” Demings said.

onePULSE Foundation bought the property in 2019 for $3.5 million dollars from the county’s Tourist Development Tax Fund. Then, onePULSE not only backed out of plans for the museum, but the Foundation also broke the funding agreement with the County by renting out the space.

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9 Investigates reported in December onePULSE collected up to $129,000 in rent on the property. The Foundation’s founder Barbara Poma told us then that the property was leased out to “offset property taxes”.

Nearly $52,000 dollars of property taxes from 2023 were still owed up until Tuesday when the County agreed to take care of the bill.

“Why do you think the county taxpayers are the ones that need to foot the bill?,” reporter Ashlyn Webb asked.

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“I don’t, I’m very upset. I’m very upset we’re having to do this,” said Commissioner Mayra Uribe. “At the same time, we couldn’t allow… to lose the entire value of the property.”

Demings and county officials expressed that between the cost of the property taxes and the $3.5 million of tourist development tax dollars spent on the property, taxpayers will be able to recoup the money spent on the property now valued for $4 million.

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