By Charles Hill
Well I have given the new CVB Director time to get his feet wet. I have to say, new director same CVB. This week they spent over $50,000 on TV ads for Christmas Traditions on two of the least watched stations in the market. Just so you know why you should care, this tax is paid by you everytime you eat at a restaurant in the City. It is called a tourism tax trying to hide the fact that in essence the City residents pay an extra tax to support a few local merchants who can't figure out how to make it on Main Street without the subsidies that you provide.
Councilman Hoepfner talks about tax relief, if he really wanted to give tax relief take the tax off our local residents. Continue to tax the hotels but not the restaurants where we all eat . This $50,000 means they need to have $5,000,000 in sales from Christmas Traditions in the restaurants in town just to break even. That's not going to happen. Just one more little sercret that you might want to know. The businesses on Main Street who recieve millions in tax subsidised ads don't pay a tourism tax. That's right the shop owners get all the benefit without collecting a tax. Wouldn't it make more sense to tax tourist related businesses on Main Street and not Church's Fried Chicken on West Clay. They sold the tourism tax by making us all think the tourists would pay the freight, they aren't, we are.
The season is upon us to be giving, so Main Street, please start giving us a return on our investment. The fact is tourism hasn't paid us a dime yet. Remember all the money that was promised to the residents by having the Convention Center? Why is the city telling everyone they are broke?
