Grand County Council, Mr. Fryer and the lodging industry, and all others in Grand County,
I am sorry; I misunderstood the distinction between the TRT tax and other local taxes. I apologize to everyone I offended at the Tuesday, June 6, hearing.
I would still like to argue my point about the taxation. What is so fundamentally separate or different from the county and city as far as taxing the tourists for the services they require from us?
Why is it only the lodging units that are in the city that pay the additional Resort Community tax at 1.6 percent, the additional highway tax of 0.30 percent, the additional sales and use tax at 1.0 percent, totaling 2.9 percent that we as a community should be receiving to help mitigate the huge impacts that the tourists are having on our community?
I can argue that the person who sleeps at Rim Village or Solano Vallejo in the county, as opposed to Cottonwood Condos or Cedar Breaks in the city, has exactly the same impact on our community.
The needs of this community are great. The revenue from imposing these taxes county-wide would help tremendously. We could put some money into continuing education – diversification of our economy that would bring needed year-round jobs and a rest from the tourist season frenzy. We could afford cleanup efforts in our most sacred and overrun areas, more for the search and rescue and law enforcement who get busier every year; we may even have to supplement our hospital in this political climate. These are all services that are impacted hugely by the tourist industry. They are services that this county needs.
The final point I was trying to make on June 6 is that the tourists have no problem paying this tax in the city and they will once again have no problem when we start having them pay it in the county as well.
I also want to say that I fully support the resolution proposed by Grand County Council member Chris Baird regarding how we allocate these funds from the TRT tax and hopefully this possible additional tax on the nightly lodging in the rest of the county as well. We should collect an additional 2.9 percent tax on all nightly lodging in the county – not just the city.
