Both the Development Authority of Peachtree City and the Peachtree City Airport Authority told the City Council last weekend that current appropriations from the city's hotel-motel tax are important for the authorities' programs and operations.

Falcon Field, said airport authority chairman Robert Patterson, "will be in outstanding shape in seven or eight years, as our profit centers expand, if we can have the revenue from the hotel-motel tax against debts." DAPC Chairman Tom Farr echoed that position, commenting that debt service and economic development funding are critical needs for the revenues from the hotel-motel tax.

Assistant City Manager Joe Morton explained later that the city has plans to "reallocate" the hotel-motel tax over the next few years, gradually reducing the amounts appropriated for the authorities. The revised appropriations would be "capped" in 2006, Morton said, at a level that is about half of what each authority is receiving this year.

Morton said the city anticipates generating $429,957 in revenue for the DAPC this year, but next year's allocation would be about 90 percent of that, or around $387,000. Each year the allocation would decrease by about 10 percent until in 2006 the DAPC would get about $200,000.

For the airport authority, no decrease is anticipated for 2000 and its appropriation would be about $215,000, Morton said. Decreases starting in 2001 would take the authority down to about $100,000 in 2006, he added.