You do, you might just not know it, yet. They will be deciding where $3.8M of the $5.5M (or more) in room taxes collected will be spent.
This is also from the CCOC meeting yesterday. Specifically the “2nd SUBSTITUTE Creating Section 33.29 of the Madison General Ordinances to create a Room Tax Commission for the City of Madison.”
Mark Clear says that the state budget requires the City to create or anoint a tax commission that has authority over 70% of the room tax collected. This ordinance creates the commission and states preferences for backgrounds for people serving on the commission and 2 members will be alders, more could be. The only thing the statute requires is that someone be a member of the hotel and motel industry, it doesn’t say what that means, so in the second substitute they added language that it is someone who is a city resident and that owns or operates a hotel. The Mayor can appoint whomever, but this would be a strong preference.
Mo Cheeks asks about the person being a city resident, he says there could be owner/operators that would be beneficial to the conversation. Should they consider the residency requirement?
Clear says that they could, it would just require that there be a 2/3 vote. He also points out that they made an exception to allow an alder to chair the committee. “This is scarey”, this commission will control a great deal of money and he can’t think of any other place where tax payer dollars are turned over to people who are not elected. It is not clear how the actions of this commission will relate to the budget process. This is a “white knuckle moment” and so it is important to met that the commission has the interests of the city. We could stack it with all alders except one and the mayor still could do that, unless there is an alder who is an owner/operator of a hotel, we don’t have one now, but they might apply in district 11. giggles. The statute is silent about that.
Shiva Bidar asks about why it isn’t the alder that sits on the Convention and Visitors Bureau, she thinks that would be easier, they would be better informed.
Clear says he is on the CVB board and would like to serve on the commission but there might be a conflict of interest, since it gives money to the CVB and they are on the board. He can’t reconcile if that is a problem or not.
Ledell Zellers asks for clarifications about the state law. Clear says that they can do this, or have a tourism entity – i.e. the CVB could be the commission. Clear says “that is too scary for me”. City Attorney says that is an accurate reading of the law.
Denise DeMarb says “this is kind of an important thing”. Clear says he was surprised it wasn’t discussed at Board of Estimates (I’m not, everyone is always in a hurry to end the meeting as quickly as possible).
Bidar asks again about the CVB rep being on the board and she says there is a conflict if an alder is on the board, she thinks that there is an alder on CVB and she thinks the person with the best knowledge should be on both.
DeMarb asks about what the city attorney and mayor’s office thought about the conflict. Michael May says that there is no personal gain, they don’t set an alder salary, so they didn’t see a conflict. Clear says it wasn’t an ethics issue, but “serving two masters” problem. DeMarb says we all have those all the time. She says that while Clear might want to serve on both, other alders in the future might not. Rebecca Kemble says that doesn’t need to be in the ordinance, that can be handled in process and if they put it in the ordinance it might stymy them in the future.
Zellers asks about inconsistencies in the language and definitions about hotel and motel. Clear will review with the city attorney and perhaps have a third substitute.
Nick Zavos says that some of the positions on the commissions aren’t necessarily for alders. Clear says an earlier version had more detail and he was talked out of it.
Passes.
