Carson hotels switch course on room tax increase

Carson City's lodging properties unexpectedly revoked a proposal to increase the city's hotel room tax to 13 percent at a tourism meeting Monday night.

The proposal had been unanimously supported by five of Carson City's largest lodging properties at a Sept. 21 meeting. The Carson City Convention & Visitor's Bureau board of directors was expecting to discuss it Monday evening, but before the board could, Jonathan Boulware, general manager of Gold Dust West, asked for the item to be removed from the agenda.

"We just felt this wasn't the right environment to move forward," Boulware said Tuesday. "The timing is just not right for this."

The proposal would increased Carson City's hotel room tax from 10 percent to 13 percent on Jan. 1.

Two-thirds of the new revenue would go to Carson City Parks and Recreation to refurbish the JDW Centennial Complex with handicap accessibility, new scoreboards and fencing among other improvements. Lodging properties say a significant portion of their business comes from sports tournaments that use the facility.

The remainder of the revenue would be split between the visitors bureau and V&T Railroad for marketing.

But after several conversations in recent weeks among the lodging properties, Boulware said the hotels did not have enough confidence the money raised by the tax increase would go toward their outlined causes, prompting them to abandon the proposal - at least for now.

"Sometimes those things take time to work out," he said. "As for right now, we're just going to keep that 10 percent."

The Board of Supervisors have the ultimate say in whether there is a tax increase.

Candace Duncan, the executive director of the Carson City Convention & Visitor's Bureau, said she was "surprised and somewhat disappointed" about the outcome of Monday's meeting.

"I had been looking forward to the discussion," she said.

Duncan said it was the first time in her 20-year career in Carson City that the lodging properties had been the source of a proposal to increase the room tax rate. Usually it's the city that offers the proposal.

"I don't know if they will want to bring it back," she said. "I don't know if they plan to take another look at it and tweak it a little bit. I think right now, it's really just up in the air."

Dwight Millard, a member of the convention & visitor's bureau's board of directors and chairman of the state Commission to Reconstruct the V&T Railway, said he was disappointed the proposal wasn't discussed at Monday's meeting.

"They're probably right, the timing was probably wrong, things need to be fleshed out," Millard said. "I still think it's important that tourism support Carson City parks and recreation and maintaining and increasing the number of tournaments that are held in Carson City."

He added, "I don't think the issue needs to be totally dropped. Everybody needs to come back to the table and be willing to look at all the options."