Backers of Conservation Collier, a popular land acquisition and management program that keeps sensitive lands from being developed, won big Thursday night.

By a three-to-two vote, the Collier County Board of County Commissioners voted to approve it's 2025-26 budget — leaving some $34 million in funding for Conservation Collier.

Prior to the vote, Commissioner Chris Hall proposed gutting the land acquisition fund by $25 million this coming fiscal year.

“I’m not the Conservation Collier boogeyman,” Hall said Thursday night, "I don't care what the paper says. I don't care what the news says. I've got some fiscal common sense. "

Hall is known for his hard-line stance that taxes should not be raised year after year.

Sometimes he wins. But not Thursday night when his proposal to greatly red

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