reprinted from:
Local officials head to Raleigh to lobby for hotel room tax
By Mark Schreiner, Raleigh
Bureau Chief RALEIGH - If leaders from Wilmington and nearby beach towns are able to persuade the General Assembly they need their hotel room taxes boosted to promote tourism, they'll likely have to do it without the help of the New Hanover County Commissioners. They won't get help from many hotel owners in the effort to gain approval for an additional 3 percent room tax, either. The mayors of the county's four incorporated communities traveled to Raleigh Tuesday to testify that two bills before a House subcommittee would help the tourism industry. Representatives of two Wrightsville Beach resorts testified that increasing the taxes would make the county's hotels less competitive and predicted that any tax-supported convention center in Wilmington would fail. Meanwhile, local elected officials nodded their heads as Wilmington-area Reps. Danny McComas and Thomas Wright agreed with committee members that the commissioners were conspicuously absent. In Wilmington on Tuesday, New Hanover County Commissioner Julia Boseman said she felt the board was not invited to help draft the bills and would likely choose not to become involved in the debate. Money from the county's current 3 percent hotel room tax, is divided between a fund for beach renourishment and tourism marketing through the visitors bureau. The two bills break new ground in that they would put the occupancy tax money directly into the hands of the City Council and town boards. They would also create a county tourism development authority, which would presumably replace the visitors bureau with a far stronger and influential agency created by the General Assembly. Rep. McComas, a Republican, told subcommittee Chairman Mary Jarrell, D-Guilford, that the commissioners haven't said they oppose his bill - which would raise the sales tax on hotel rooms in Wrightsville Beach, Carolina Beach and Kure Beach. But, he added, they "have yet to put into writing that they support it." Rep. Wright, a Democrat whose bill would raise the hotel-room sales tax in the city to fund a downtown convention center, said he felt he did not have the commissioners' support. Earlier this month, in a rare public discussion by the commissioners on the issue, Ms. Boseman told her fellow commissioners she was concerned that a now discarded draft was needlessly complicated. "I had hoped the city could secure private dollars for a convention center," said Ms. Boseman, who is the commissioners' liaison to the Cape Fear Coast Convention and Visitors Bureau. "The emphasis for the rest of it, I think, should be on beach renourishment and tourism marketing." Pollster Susan K. Bulluck, speaking for the Holiday Inn SunSpree, told the subcommittee that her research indicates that at least 65 percent of visitors to New Hanover County beaches come from other places in the state. "Given that statistic, then a hotel tax then becomes an additional tax on other North Carolinians for the privilege of visiting their own beaches," she said. She suggested that many projects, other than the convention center, should be paid for with property taxes and state government, rather than a tax on lodging, should support tourism. Support from all affected interests in New Hanover County will be crucial to getting the bills passed this session, Rep. McComas and Rep. Wright said. The long-awaited state budget is in a House-Senate conference now and a bill on new business incentives, thought to be one of the last pieces of major legislation this year, has passed the House. Once those items are adopted, insiders believe, the end of session could be estimated in days. Also, the House Finance Committee is taking increasingly harder looks at local occupancy tax bills. At Tuesday's meeting, Rep. Jarrell told the mayors that she would not look favorably on any hotel tax bill that would raise money for projects "like installing streetlights and filling potholes, which should be paid for with the property tax." Local leaders will be needed, Rep. Wright said, to help fight the desire by some lawmakers to combine the two bills. The two need to remain separate, he said, to keep city and town interests untangled and to increase the chances that at least one will get passed this session. "You've heard the mayors say we've been working on this for 20 years - I'm only 47," Rep. Wright told the subcommittee. "This needs to get done." Rep. Wright's bill would raise the tax paid by guests of hotels inside the Wilmington city limits by 3 cents. That money would accumulate in a fund for three years while city leaders planned the convention center. At the end of three years, when city officials estimate there will be more than $ 4 million in the fund, the county tourism development authority, if one has been created, will decide if the city's plans make sense. If they don't the authority gets to keep the fund. "We need the time to do this right," said Wilmington Mayor Harper Peterson. Rep. McComas' bill would create the
authority and allow each of the three beach towns to levy a 3 percent tax on
hotel stays. |
