Proposal taking parts of hotel tax revenue from visitors bureau nixed

A proposal to use part of the hotel tax now devoted entirely to the Chattanooga Area Convention and Visitors Bureau for other tourism-related and homeless relief projects died at a Hamilton County Commission meeting Wednesday.

Last week, District 8 County Commissioner Tim Boyd proposed to freeze the money for the tourism bureau and use the growth from the hotel tax — which is expected to top $10 million a year by 2023 — to help pay for tourism-related capital projects at local parks or monuments.

County government has allocated all proceeds from its portion of the hotel-motel tax to the Chattanooga Convention and Visitors Bureau since 2007 to promote tourism. The county dissolved its Tourist Development Agency more than a decade ago and committed the tax to the Convention and Visitors Bureau amid complaints the projects that TDA funded often were pet projects by county commissioners or were not related to tourism as the state act enabling hotel room taxes requires.

Boyd is proposing to again use some of the hotel tax collections for projects other than those overseen by the visitors bureau. He wants to freeze the bureau’s allocation from the hotel tax at the 2018-19 level, estimated to be about $8.2 million, for the next three years. Hotel-motel tax revenue above that amount would be designated for the new fund, which could be used only for capital projects.

But even after a presentation on how other communities use hotel-motel taxes to fund arts and cultural projects, the resolution died after it did not receive a second from another commissioner.

Jay Dicks, senior director of state and local government affairs for Americans for the Arts, encouraged commissioners to think about how the arts stimulate local economies and tourism.

“My job here today is to get you to think about the arts in a different way,” Dicks said. “The arts are so much more in our country today. They are afterschool, dropout retention programs. They really do a lot of things, a lot more than we traditionally think about.”

Barry White, president of the visitors bureau, also spoke to the commission, identifying the work the bureau has done under his leadership and the goals the bureau shares with the commission. White has previously committed to working alongside the county to achieve its goals, such as helping the homeless, who can sometimes deter visitors downtown, but told the Times Free Press last week that such priorities should be addressed with community funds.