Osceola County commissioners Monday made progress in deciding how to spend $19 million in tourist development tax reserves.

Up to $9 million of the lodging tax could be used to replace, relocate or renovate existing facilities to sites along the heavily-traveled U.S. Highway 192.

The commission tentatively decided to replace the Veterans Tribute and Museum now housed at Osceola Square Mall with a new museum to be housed in the building that now serves as the office for the Kissimmee Convention and Visitors Bureau at Osceola Heritage Park. The county will renovate the building and provide start-up funding for the facility. The $2 million price tag for the new museum of military history finally is one we can live with.

Building a new museum for the Osceola County Historical Society behind what will be the Shingle Creek nature center on West U.S. Highway 192 will add visibility to this organization’s collection of historic items. Also, the relocation of historic buildings in the society’s Pioneer Village to Shingle Creek Regional Park will help this relatively new park reach additional visitors, with some of them staying overnight here.

All the upgrades to Osceola Heritage Park and the Silver Spurs Arena that commissioners tentatively approved are needed to keep the facility competitive and we wonder why certain upgrades weren’t done in the past, such as adding a freight elevator. And in not agreeing to changes to the existing horse stalls and multi-purpose building at the arena, commissioners made a decision that is right for the uncertain times we are in.

Commissioners also prudently punted on spending the remaining $10 million in reserve on amateur sports playing fields as a way to generate additional overnight stays, and thus additional tourist tax revenue. The commissioners wanted more time to analyze the latest offers from three developers and to see whether the sports association that would derive the most benefit from the new fields would be willing to make an investment of its own in the project.

For our part, the price tags for all three proposals still worry us – even where eight fields would be built in an initial phase at less cost. Instead, we like the county manager’s suggestion that the county should explore building additional fields at sports facilities or on vacant property it already owns.

In addition, we may not really have $10 million in reserve to spend in light of having to use $2 million annually at current revenue levels to adequately fund the visitors bureau.