Emporia’s “bed tax” may soon be going up from 5 percent to 6 percent.
Known more formally as the transient guest tax, the levy has been a way of using tourists to pay for promoting Emporia. The money is used both to market the city and to support attractions such as the William Allen White House State Historic Site.
But this year, the Convention and Tourism Bureau’s advisory board has a lot of requests and not quite enough money for all of them. The gap is about $20,000. So on Wednesday, city commissioners discussed bumping up the bed tax by a percentage point, which would add $63,000 to the budget.
“To me, it just seems that if your budget is short, you’ve got to raise prices,” Mayor Jim Kessler said. “Or you’ve got to cut something.”
Jeanine McKenna of the Emporia Area Chamber of Commerce and Convention & Visitors Bureau said that business owners weren’t thrilled at increasing the tax, though most could see the need. But she also said the commission needed to look at how the money would be used.
Originally, guest tax money could only be used for marketing, such as through billboards along the highway or ads in national publications. Over the years, the standards have loosened a bit and the visitors bureau has sometimes given money to help with operating a tourist attraction.
But that use has always been a little controversial, because every dollar that goes to operations can’t be used for marketing. One possibility, McKenna said, might be to segregate the funds. The basic five percent would be used to promote Emporia while the last one percent would be held by the city for grants to local attractions.
“I think the water’s been muddied,” McKenna said. “There needs to be a clear policy set.”
The commissioners generally agreed that a formula would be a good idea. But Commissioner Bobbie Agler said he also wanted to see some measurable objectives for how the funds would be used. That way, he said, the bureau’s advisory board would know what it needed and not just what it had.
“To spend $358,000 (in total budget) and have no objectives to measure it against seems like mismanagement,” Agler said.
The issue will be voted on at an upcoming city meeting. If passed, it would take effect 60 days later.