Wednesday, May 26, 2004

PTC Council OK’s hotel-motel tax funds for tourism group By JOHN MUNFORD jmunford@TheCitizenNews.com The newly-formed Peachtree City Tourism Association is about to have its revenue stream in place. An agreement approved by the city council Thursday night allows the city to distribute two-thirds of the city’s hotel-motel tax revenues to the association, which now operates the city’s amphitheater and tennis center. The other one-third of the revenues will go into a separate hotel-motel tax fund for payment of the debt service on general obligation bond to expand the airport and the debt service for tennis center and amphitheater improvements, said City Public Information Officer Betsy Tyler. At this point, a million-dollar debt owed by DAPC to Peachtree National Bank is unaffected by the council’s actions. That controversial debt remains unpaid. The hotel-motel tax agreement must still be considered by the tourism association at its next meeting. According to the agreement, the tourism association must spend its hotel-motel tax revenues “to promote tourism, conventions and trade shows.” The agreement will renew automatically on Jan. 1 each year unless either party gives 60 days notice in writing before that date. The agreement may also terminate before Sept. 30 of this year if a separate agreement is terminated between the council and the association to run the tennis center and amphitheater. There is no indication that either agreement will be terminated, Tyler said. The hotel-motel tax agreement between the city council and the tourism association is also expected to benefit the city’s airport authority, which has gone since November without hotel-motel tax payments estimated at $10,000 a month. Those payments were cut off because of the legal improprieties discovered with the mechanism in place to forward the funds to the airport authority. The airport authority uses its hotel-motel tax revenues for capital improvement projects, some of which have been on hold since November while the city stockpiled what payments it would normally have given to the authority. Instead of using its current agreement with the city council, however, the airport authority will need to use a new agreement with the tourism association. There have been no indications that the city wants to reduce the amount of money provided to the airport authority from the hotel-motel tax.