Catch us live on BlogTalkRadio every



Tuesday & Thursday at 6pm P.S.T.




Saturday, April 3, 2010

County must track the money

OFF THE WIRE
Warren County officials have no idea how much revenue is generated by specific events they support out of county occupancy tax collections.

They collect data on the number of people who stay at local campgrounds and motels, but they have no idea what those people's spending habits are when they visit here.

They don't know how many people stay at local hotels and motels on a week-to-week basis because they don't break down quarterly sales tax revenue and occupancy tax revenue by week.

They don't know how many people register for the Americade motorcycle rally or how many people go through the gates of Great Escape during the summer because the operators of those venues refuse to tell them.

Yet despite not having accurate and timely information about the impact of events and businesses on local tourism, the county continues to provide taxpayer money to support these events and businesses.

If you ran a business, and you didn't collect revenue information on a weekly basis on how certain products or programs were faring, you'd be considered irresponsible.

Yet Warren County regularly hands out taxpayer money to events like Americade and businesses like Great Escape without knowing exactly how much revenue they help generate and whether it's worth it for taxpayers to support them. We're not even sure county supervisors even review what information they do get before approving requests for occupancy tax money.

In an article in which we attempted to find out the actual financial impact of Americade, we learned that it's very difficult to know exactly what financial impact this event and others like the Elvis festival, the LARAC festival, the Adirondack Nationals car show and other big events in the region have on the economy.

That's because Warren County doesn't require businesses to break down that information in an way in which they can accurately assess the impact. Sales and occupancy tax payments are collected every three months and aren't broken down by week.

The county does subscribe to a service by the Smith Travel Research organization that provides daily occupancy data for its member hotels and motels. But that's not the same as collecting actual data from all the businesses in the county.

Asking local businesses to provide week-by-week breakdowns of their collections on a quarterly basis, for instance, wouldn't create an unnecessary burden on those businesses because it's very likely they're recording that information every week anyway. And having that specific information could give county supervisors who are reviewing applications for occupancy tax money a better idea about the financial impact of events and businesses that claim to be contributing to the local economy.

The county also should consider plugging in other factors to help assess the impact.

The village of Lake George measures its tourist volume by the amount of water they use and the amount of sewage they produce through the sewage treatment plant. Clever.

The county could also collect parking meter or parking ticket data. The more tourists, the more cars, the more tickets and hours the parking meter.

They could survey campers and people who stay at hotels about how much they spend on food and activities. They could require that local amusement parks, venues and events like Americade provide them with accurate registration or attendance data.

Right now, they simply refuse.

What kind of trade secrets are these companies protecting when anyone can stand in front of their business and count the cars in the parking lot or count the number of people who walk through the doors?

Want a permit? Tell us what your registration numbers are or you don't get the bed tax money. If you don't want to tell us, don't take the money.

It's called getting a good return on the taxpayers' investment.

And right now, county supervisors don't collect enough data on a regular basis to know whether they're getting that return or not.

Local editorials represent the opinion of The Post-Star editorial board, which consists of Publisher Rick Emanuel, Editor Ken Tingley, Editorial Page Editor Mark Mahoney and citizen member Roger Guglielmo.

original article