Public hearing set for county hotel occupancy tax
By Steve Herring
Published in News on October 8, 2015 1:46 PM
A new countywide 1 percent hotel occupancy tax is expected to go into effect on Dec. 1.
But before that happens, Wayne County commissioners have a laundry list of housekeeping chores.
The plan is to have everything ready for commissioners to act on the tax at their meeting Oct. 20, County Manager George Wood said.
Commissioners have scheduled a public hearing on the tax for Oct. 20 at 9:15 a.m. in their meeting room on the fourth floor of the county courthouse annex.
To set the stage for the hearing, the county and city of Goldsboro must first amend their agreement, which was the impetus for the tax.
In March, the city and county announced an agreement that was based on a 1 percent increase in the city's hotel occupancy tax, taking it from 5 to 6 percent.
Getting the total up to 6 percent will enable the tax revenues to be divided into thirds between the city and county and for marketing travel and tourism in the county.
Under the terms of the agreement, the city will give the county 12 acres of land on North Wayne Memorial Drive on which to build its agricultural and convention center.
In exchange for the county increasing the size of the assembly area, the city agreed to ask for the occupancy tax increase and to provide 33 percent of the additional revenues for the first 20 years for the center and 25 percent thereafter. That money would be used by the county to help fund the center and its operations.
The county will also loan Goldsboro $3 million at 1.5 percent interest over 15 years for its multi-sports complex.
But the increase in the tax ran into opposition from the owners of the Sleep Inn in Mount Olive. A compromise was reached in which the net proceeds of the tax revenues generated in Mount Olive would be placed into two separate accounts -- one for Mount Olive and one for Wayne County. Seventy percent of the total amount collected in the town will go to Mount Olive and 30 percent to the county.
The revenue will be held as reserve funds for the town until such time as it submits a request for the use of a portion or all of the funds for the promotion of travel and tourism within the town.
Any such request must be documented as a legal use under the county's room occupancy tax local legislation and supported with invoices, contracts, or similar evidence of valid expenditures.
City and county officials said the countywide tax still meets the original intent of their agreement. But the original agreement must be amended to reflect the change.
"(The agreement) is written in a way as to how we are going to split that 6 percent between the parties," Wood said. "So we have to change any provisions in the agreement that deals with that to make it clear we are distributing the 5 percent Goldsboro has, plus the 1 percent that the county has.
"All of that has been rewritten. We had a meeting with the city manager, the city attorney and one or two other people last week. We agreed on some language. We have made those amendments."
County Attorney Borden Parker has reviewed the changes and offered some corrections, Wood said.
Once the corrections are added, the agreement will be sent back to the city for review, Wood said.
"Our plan is that on the 19th the city would adopt that agreement and then on the 20th you would adopt that agreement," he said. "So we would have the agreement in hand that spells out basically how we are divvying up the 6 percent that we get."
That will be done prior to the public hearing.
Once the public hearing is held, commissioners can act on a resolution implementing the tax.
Wood said he is recommending the effective date be Dec. 1.
The final piece will be the appointment of a Wayne County Tourism Development Authority that will be charged with overseeing how the money is spent to promote travel and tourism in the county.
The city already has a tourism council, Wood said.
The idea is to appoint a county tourism authority to mirror the city council to better enable a joint marketing operation between the city and county, he said.