Like many other cities in Texas, Amarillo is starting a project to revitalize its downtown area. At the present time Amarillo has a very nice convention center, but they don't have a hotel within walking distance of it. One of the major efforts in the revitalization plan is to build a large, first-class hotel in the downtown area. I think the hotel is a great idea and is badly needed.
To attract a hotel, the city is willing to raise the money and pay part of the cost of the building. I don't have a problem with that. It's the way they're planning to raise that money that bothers me.
The city currently levies an occupancy tax on hotels and motels. That tax money can legally be used in various ways according to state law, but it is not legal to use it to build a hotel. Therefore, the city is planning to ask the legislature for a "tax-use waiver" -- a waiver that would allow them to use the motel occupancy tax to help build the downtown.
Somehow, that strikes me as being very unfair. They want the area's motels to raise the money to build their own competitor -- actually kind of a "super competitor". This new competitor they would finance would not only be upscale, but it would have a huge location advantage.
Wouldn't this be like taxing area restaurants to build a huge downtown upscale restaurant? Or taxing area retailers to build a huge new big-box competitor? Should any businessman, regardless of the business he/she is in, be forced to raise the funds to finance his/her own competition?
Maybe I'm making too much of this, but it just seems wrong. I don't have a problem with the occupancy tax, and I see the need for a good hotel near the convention center. I just don't think it's right to use this tax to finance the hotel, or any part of it.
You're exactly right. The city **needs** the hotel [at least one in my opinion]. The work they've done on polk street is great and I'd like to see it revitalized even further [kinda like the scene in the movie "Cars"]. But they need to find a better way to fund it. I wonder what the ROI is on the tax...in other words, how long will it be before they have recovered enough money through the occupancy tax to have covered the amount of the bond that will be used to build the hotel? I think that a better solution would be to let the developer build the hotel on his dime and then have the city provide a period of time [10 years for example] where the new hotel could operate tax free [or discounted][at least relative to those taxes that are in the purview of the city/county]. Thanks for the article!
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