Government spending -- A Willoughby Station Dicussion Forum With Standards

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01/21/26 05:10:43

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Subject: Government spending

Author:
Butch Huber

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Date Posted: Sat, Feb 28 2009, 11:53:21
In reply to: Chris 's message, "Might want some better info" on Sat, Feb 28 2009, 10:38:35

Terri,

The city of Mt. Juliet enacted a Hotel/Motel tax at the end of 2007 or the beginning of 2008. The purpose of that tax was for the purpose of providing funds for city owned and operated parks and recreation activities. A Hotel/Motel tax is ordinarily established for the purpose of increasing tourism in the city, in other words, the government typically takes that money from all hotels and motels to spend on things that would increase the likelihood that people would come to a city to visit and end up spending their dollars in that city. However, our city government, in their infinite wisdom decided to use their taxing authority to take money directly from people who use our hotels to pay for things like a skate park. What they did by enacting this tax for the reasons they stated were bad enough, but they just couldn't leave it at that. No, our government can't be content with just making a small mistake, they have to work it up into a colossal blunder. Once they enacted the hotel/motel tax, under the pretense that it was to provide funding for city parks and recreation, the commission turned around and changed the ordinance that enacted the hotel/motel tax so that it covertly allowed the commission to use those funds to purchase the Mt. Juliet Elementary School property for the purpose of giving the land to the YMCA!

The annual payments the city would have had to make under the plan that was proposed when they voted to amend the hotel/motel tax ordinance would have been $210,000. Ray Justice kept saying that the hotel/motel tax would pay for the donation to the YMCA. Ironically, if you could call it irony, the City Manager projected that the revenue from the Hotel/Motel tax would be $250,000 per year, which was more than enough to cover the cost of acquisition of the Old MJES site. However, I looked into the hotel/motel tax and discovered that it is highly improbable that the hotel/motel tax would raise $100,000 per year, and certainly wouldn't raise $250,000. In other words, the city manager and Ray Justice, in my opinion, were inflating the projected revenue from the Hotel/Motel tax in order to sell the deal to the public.

All that having been said, the hotel/motel tax has generated some money, which I am guessing is probably around $80,000 to $90,000 by now, and the city has an obligation to use that money for the purposes stated in the ordinances that authorized the hotel/motel tax. In other words, the city cannot just deposit the hotel/motel tax into the general fund and use it to pay bills on non-park/non-recreation items.

The City Parks Director urged the city commission to consider, before they voted to amend the hotel/motel tax ordinance, that the city had committed, at least in theory, to upgrade the current parks and make improvements, and that they were now planning to use virtually, if not totally, all of the revenues from this hotel/motel tax for purposes that would not improve city owned facilities. They ignored him.

Now that the city isn't going to waste our tax money on the gift to the YMCA they can use that money, and should use that money, and I believe legally "must" use that money, for the purposes they gave for enacting the tax in the first place. Now, I suppose they can change the hotel/motel tax ordinance once again, and I suppose they could change it to allow them to put the money in the general fund for general expenses, but if they do they will likely deal with some level of confrontation from the hotel/motel industry. I personally called the people involved in the hotel/motel industry when they were amending the ordinance in the first place and I can tell you that were not impressed with what this commission was doing in the least.

The hotel/motel tax is taking money from people who don't live in Mt. Juliet. Cities across the nation do the same thing, but most have the common decency to use the money for purposes that will actually help attract visitors to the area. The way this city set up the hotel/motel tax is nothing more than a way to shakedown those who visit our city.

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Replies:

Subject	Author	Date
budget troubles	Butch Huber	Mon, Mar 02 2009, 9:45:26