BROADCASTS.com

December 12, 2022, Sarah Reith \u2014 The Board of Supervisors gave a less-than-resounding nod of approval to the first step of an effort to increase tax assessments on businesses that appeal to tourists. \n\nThe Mendocino County Tourism Commission and a contractor called Civitas Advisors told the Board that they believe the county should allow the Business Improvement District, or BID, to double its assessment from one to two percent on all lodging concerns, including campgrounds. The Commission also wants to evaluate the option of collecting a 1% assessment from what it calls \u201ctourist facing\u201d businesses, including restaurants and tasting rooms. The businesses and local government bodies in the cities and the unincorporated parts of the county would have to agree to the higher rate, which the businesses would pass on to their customers. According to Commission Executive Director Travis Scott, the 2% assessment is an industry standard in northern California. The Commission\u2019s efforts to promote the county are funded by the current 1% assessment, plus fifty cents on the dollar from the county general fund. The proposed higher assessment is intended to save the county money on marketing itself to visitors.\n\nThe Commission\u2019s final goal is to reconfigure the parameters of the Business Improvement District, including its structure and the length of its contract. But yesterday, Emily Brown, of Civitas, told the Board that all she wants at the moment is access to information about the county sales tax and transient occupancy tax, to see if the plan is even worth pursuing. \n\nSupervisor Dan Gjerde was skeptical, saying, \u201cYou already know exactly how much the existing lodging produces, because you already receive a 1% BID from the existing lodging. The only thing you don\u2019t have now is the assessment on the campgrounds, in terms of lodging. But we have a 10% ToT tax that the county is donating, per voter proposal, to the fire departments. But we already have that data. You just do a multiplier, or a division, of the ten percent tax that the campgrounds are collecting. And I believe it\u2019s about $700,000 a year, so 1% would be $70,000 a year, one and a half would be a hundred and five. So that doesn\u2019t need any new information from the county Treasurer (Tax Collector) Auditor (Controller)\u2019s office. I don\u2019t want to release the information about restaurants because that just stirs up a hornet\u2019s nest, county-wide\u2026it\u2019s going to slow down this process, and we\u2019re going to be voting on our county budget, and you will not have approval from any of the cities, I predict, if the restaurants are included in the discussion. And so what does that do? Well, 40% of the BID, right now, comes from the four cities. If you lose all that BID collection from the cities, you\u2019ve gained almost nothing, even if you go from a one to a two percent BID. Because now you\u2019ve lost 40% of your revenue. So your net increase is infinitesimal. And then you\u2019re still going to be looking for a match from the county. Which we don\u2019t have.\u201d\n\nSupervisor Glenn McGourty had a different take, explaining his support by reasoning that, \u201cWhat we\u2019re doing is we\u2019re giving them (the businesses) the information. This is what it looks like if you decide to do this. This is what it\u2019s going to cost you. This is how much money would be raised. You decide, not us. And then I think that that is a very different message than saying, we\u2019re all going to fail because we know you\u2019re opposed.\u201d\n\n\n\nMartha Barra, an influential local business woman, said she thinks this is the wrong time to ask for an increased assessment, but that tourism is poised to overtake other sectors of the economy.\n\n\u201cMarijuana is dead,\u201d she declared. \u201cIf you saw the front page of the Press Democrat on Sunday, when cannabis goes from $4000 a pound to $100 a pound, there\u2019s no way that those growers can even work to become legal. So we\u2019ve got tourism, and we need to put our efforts into making our county pristine, beautiful, and attractive. And as our businesses start doing better, this will be our hope for our county.\u201d\n\nMichael Katz, Executive Director of the Mendocino Cannabis Alliance, refuted one of Barra\u2019s points. \u201cCannabis is not dead in Mendocino County,\u201d he insisted. \u201cIt is also in a downturn \u2014 a significant downturn, part of which has been exacerbated by the Mendocino Cannabis Department and the Board (of Supervisors), but that is something that can be resolved. The few things that have (been) shown to provide reliable revenue recently have been tourism and cannabis.\u201d He added that he supports funding the Commission to continue drawing tourists, many of whom he believes are drawn by the county\u2019s reputation for high-quality cannabis.\n\nSupervisor Ted Williams invoked the county\u2019s ongoing budget woes, but eventually voted with Supervisors McGourty and Maureen Mulheren to grant Civitas the razor-thin margin it needed to access the financial data and to craft a nondisclosure agreement about it.\n\n\u201c...