1. The county commission shall have power and it shall be its duty at the May term of the commission of each year to levy a tax upon each tract of land or other property within each district sufficient to maintain, reserve, restore, repair, strengthen and replace the drains, ditches, levees and other works of the district for whose benefits such tax is levied. Said tax shall be known as a “maintenance tax” and shall be apportioned upon the basis of benefits assessed for the original construction and shall be limited in any one year to ten percent of the original cost of construction. The tax shall be entered in a separate column in the ditch tax books opposite each tract of land or other property in the district by the county clerk, and shall be certified to the county collector, or other person duly authorized and by him collected in the same manner and subject to the same penalties for delinquency as the annual installment tax.

2. All taxes derived from the assessments herein referred to shall be the absolute property of the drainage district under authority of which they were levied and assessed and shall be placed to the credit of the maintenance fund of the drainage district; except that the county commission may, on request, set aside from time to time a portion of the tax from each of one or more districts in the county into a fund to be used by the county commission for the purchase of dredge boats, tools and other machinery to be used in the maintenance and preservation of the ditches, drains and levees of the participating districts. The portion appropriated from each district to be so used shall be determined by dividing into two equal parts the estimated cost of the dredge boats, tools and machinery purchased. One such part shall be apportioned in the ratio that the total benefit assessments in each participating district assessed for original construction bears to the aggregate total assessed benefits for original construction in all the participating districts, and the other part shall be apportioned in the ratio that the total yards of excavation or yardage moved, as the case may be, in constructing the original improvements in each participating district bears to the total yards of excavation or yards moved in constructing original improvements in all of the participating districts.

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3. The dredge boats, tools and other machinery so purchased, shall be and become the general property of the participating districts, and be used under the direction of the county commission in the cleaning and restoration of any such ditch, drain or levee in said districts to its original size and condition; providing, however, that nothing contained in this section shall prevent the county commission from maintaining, preserving, restoring, repairing, strengthening and replacing the drains, ditches, levees and other works of any district and the use of its maintenance funds therefor, without purchasing dredge boats, tools or other machinery.