With hopeful applicants –– including a group that wants to bring big-league baseball to Orlando  –– lining up for a share of tourist tax funding, Orange County Comptroller Phil Diamond instead used a theme-park attraction Friday to describe the ups-and-downs of the levy currently on a 14-month record run.

A statistic graph showed the line of revenues undulating like a roller-coaster, rising in good times but dropping after the 9/11 terror attacks, dipping in 2009 spurred the Great Recession, and plummeting in 2020 amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

“That’s a little bit less of a roller-coaster and a little more Tower of Terror,” said Diamond, suggesting the Hollywood Studios thrill ride was a more apt comparison for the revenue plunge blamed on the recent pandemic.

Diamond, the county’s elected fiscal watchdog, used the analogy to help a citizens task force understand the volatility of the 6% tax added to the cost of a hotel room or other short-term lodging.

The tax raked in $336 million in fiscal year 2021-22, the most ever, and $39 million in March.

But Diamond said the panel must understand the risks of committing tourist tax money to projects.

“We, here in Orange County and in Las Vegas saw more of a hit to our economies than anybody else in the country,” he said. “We are so tourism-reliant. … It took us four years to get back to where we were.”

In public meetings over the next several months, the advisory panel will review each of the 52 applications submitted for funding requests that total $3.8 billion, ranging from $975 million for a Major League Baseball stadium to $600 to help the Florida Songwriters Association stage music events.

Tony Jenkins, the panel’s co-chair, advised applicants that Friday’s meeting was “not an appropriate time to pitch your project to the task force. There will be opportunities to present the details in the future.”

But some could not resist the podium or the microphone.

Orlando Magic co-founder Pat Williams, leading the Orlando City Baseball Dreamers’ bid to bring Major League Baseball to Orange County, urged the panel to stand and stretch as if it was the seventh-inning of a ball game.

“The heartbeat of any city, the pulse of any city, are two things: the arts and major league sports teams,” he said, attired in a matching orange baseball cap and T-shirt. “We have the Magic. We’ve got Major League Soccer. We’re missing one big element now and that’s Major League Baseball and we have one chance right now.”

He said he believes MLB will add two teams soon, one in the east, one in the west.

“We’re going to be going head-to-head with Nashville,” Williams said.

The advisory panel includes appointees from four chambers of commerce; from each of the six Orange County commissioners; and from 11 Orange County cities, except the Disney municipalities of Bay Lake and Lake Buena Vista.

Friday’s meeting, the group’s second, was intended to provide members with facts, figures and history of the voter-authorized levy known as the tourist, hotel or bed tax; Tourist Development Tax; or TDT, for short.

Senior assistant county attorney Kate Latorre also briefed the panel on state law guiding use of TDT revenue, which is generally restricted to tourism promotion and activities, events, services and venues meant to attract tourists.

Casandra Matej, president and CEO of Visit Orlando, the hospitality and tourism industry’s tax-funded marketing arm, said 74 million visitors came to Central Florida in 2022, a 25% increase over 2021 and just shy of the record 75.8 million who visited the region in pre-pandemic 2019.

Visit Orlando got $96 million in TDT money last year for its work promoting the Orange County Convention Center, Disney, Universal and SeaWorld theme parks and other attractions to national and international audiences, an effort that the agency said kept Orlando as America’s most-visited destination.

Orange County Mayor Jerry Demings told the task force their help was needed.

“I can tell you that in reviewing the various requests that came in from throughout our community that all of it is needed,” he said. “But we do not have an unlimited source of money to accomplish what needs to be done.”

shudak@orlandosentinel.com