First Posted: 2/19/2015
LIMA — Allen County Commissioners are continuing to gather information and insight into a proposed 3 percent lodging tax increase, an increase area hotel owners believe could hinder the county’s economy.
This tax increase, available thanks to changes to the state’s mid-biennium review, would be used to fund capital improvements at Veterans Memorial Civic Center, a building owned by the county. However, local hotel owners have concerns, primarily that increasing the lodging tax by that amount would place a tax burden of 15.75 percent on everyone staying in a hotel, greater than the 10.25 percent overall rate in Auglaize County or the 13 percent in Van Wert County.
For Bobby Das, general manager of Lima’s Travelodge, Holiday Inn and Motel 6, losing hotel traffic will be felt throughout the county.
“It’s a ripple effect,” he said. “If we don’t have business here, restaurants, gas stations, Walmart, Happy Daz, Kewpee, all of it will suffer.”
Hotels also have concerns about giving more funding to a venue that does not attract lodgers.
“The Civic Center does not give us rooms,” Courtyard by Marriott general manager Dan Peterson said. “It’s a local attraction.”
In a meeting with the Lima/Allen County Convention and Visitors Bureau, county commissioners discussed the lodging tax in more detail, including potentially lowering the county’s current 3 percent lodging tax before adding tax to benefit the Civic Center.
“We pretty much have a plan in place and it will involve a lodging tax increase as well as a reduction of present lodging tax, which will still result in a net increase,” commissioner Jay Begg said. “That’s what we’re trying to flesh out.”
Funds would also be used to create a new marketing position for the Civic Center, a position that could benefit other county venues, as well.
“The fairgrounds does some marketing, the Civic Center does some marketing, but neither one of them has someone on staff whose job it is to fill up the place,” Begg said.
Commissioners plan on meeting with representatives from the hotel industry before a decision is made, hoping that a reduction in the current lodging tax can help create a workable compromise.
“That’s what this whole thing has been, trying to mitigate that, because no one wants that,” Begg said. “Everything’s negotiable.”
Linda Chartrand, financial officer for the Allen County CVB, expressed a willingness to work with the commissioners on this issue, provided the letter of the law is observed.
“What we want to do, if possible, is that if our agreement can be changed and we can still work within what the Ohio Revised Code says and it’s good for the Civic Center and it still gives us what we need to operate, of course we want to help,” she said.
Michele Knoch-Hicks, director of sales for Lima’s Holiday Inn, expressed guarded optimism after the commissioners’ meeting, hoping that more information will be available for hotel owners.
“I’m encouraged that they’re going to meet with the hotels,” she said. “However, we want to see some figures. We need to know there’s accountability with the funds [the Civic Center is] already getting.”
