Otero County defeats spaceport tax

One little-noticed but important vote tonight was the defeating by Otero County residents of a tax increase to help fund Spaceport America.

With all votes counted, the proposed 1/8 percent tax increase was defeated with 8,179 votes, or 47.7 percent, for the tax, and 8,954 votes, or 52.3 percent, against it.

What does it mean? It’s not immediately clear. The tax wasn’t critical to the spaceport project. The state has already secured most of the funding for the project from the Legislature and the Doña Ana County tax that was approved last year. In addition, voters in Sierra County approved a tax increase earlier this year.

But the tax was to have raised some $6.6 million of the estimated $200 million cost of the spaceport and, more importantly, state officials hoped Otero would become the third in a tri-county effort to build and support the spaceport.

A prior version of this posting incorrectly stated that the tax would have raised $2.3 million for the spaceport.