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RADNOR » For over 60 years, Radnor has had an amusement tax on its books. But a lack of enforcement over the years has limited what the township has collected.

Due to the ineffectiveness, township officials have been considering what to do about it.

At Monday night’s meeting of the board of commissioners, the board considered two options. One was to repeal the ordinance. If that failed to pass, members would introduce a revised ordinance they believed could generate much more revenue for the township.

But first, what is an amusement tax?

“An amusement tax is a tax imposed on people whether they live in the township or not who attend or participate in amusements in the township,” Jenny Brown, the township’s tax solicitor, told the board Monday night.

Under such a tax, people paying to attend amusement events must pay a 10 percent tax on the entrance cost. The event organizer must collect the tax, and if they don’t, they must still pay whatever would have been owed.

The idea behind a revised ordinance was to get a higher participation rate.

According to township officials, Radnor collects around $15,000 each year, but if the township were to make changes, it could collect $300,000 to $400,000 with a newly worded code.

One of the things Radnor was looking at with a revised ordinance was to clarify what organizations were responsible for collecting the tax. A provision in the ordinance seemed to exempt charitable organizations in one place. But then the language of the code said it did apply to charitable organizations.

To clarify that part of the ordinance, Radnor considered in its revised ordinance that they would delete the exemption section and replace it with something new. The new wording would define some activities as having no commercial value, such as a school play or high school football game.

In a comment to the board, Chris Kovolski, assistant vice president of government relations and external affairs for Villanova University, said the revised version of the ordinance was targeted at one of their most successful programs.

“This is a tax that is clearly targeted toward Villanova University and specifically those who pay to attend basketball games on campus,” Kovolski said.

At least one commissioner agreed.

Commissioner Sean Farhy agreed that the plan was targeting Villanova basketball, and that was why he supported it.

“There is a professional team in this township … and they are selling tickets, and this directly applies to them, and we’re at a loss of money partly because of them, and I think it’s time we collect,” Farhy said.

In the end, the board approved a motion to repeal the ordinance by a five-to-two vote and there was never a vote on the revised one.