(Spirit Lake)– The Dickinson County Board of Supervisors are considering a proposal pertaining to additional revenue coming into the county’s Hotel-Motel Tax from property rentals such as VRBO’s. Assistant County Attorney Lonnie Saunders told the supervisors $30,000 of that would be capped for tourism, with the rest to the county…
“You would have the flexibility to use the additional amount over that $30,000 for other things you might want to use it for rather than have to direct it all to tourism at Okoboji. So that’s the genesis of what we’re doing here and that’s what this allows us to do. It gives you quite a lot of flexibility actually to use that additional amount. The numbers that I was hearing were maybe upwards of $90,000 in revenue this year, which would bring an additional $60,000 to play with that you otherwise wouldn’t have.”
Supervisor Tim Fairchild said he was concerned over setting the $30,000 cap for tourism, saying it could tie the county’s hands in the future…
“I don’t know why we’d want to limit ourselves in case some wonderful project came along. Wouldn’t we want to be able to use all those proceeds? I just think that we’re sitting ourselves up in a similar position with what we have now where we’re being overly restrictive on what the Board of Supervisors wants to do with this money.”
Following some further discussion, the supervisors directed Saunders to revise language in the proposal to address the concern and bring it back for possible action next week.
The original requirement of 50 percent of overall Hotel-Motel tax revenue going to tourism and 50 percent to tax relief would remain in place under the proposal.
