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Arts' room tax share for ads only

By STEVE HUETTEL
Published June 15, 2006

CLEARWATER - Arts organizations will be restricted to spending money from Pinellas County's resort room tax on promoting their events to tourists.

The county's Tourist Development Council decided last month to give the groups a guaranteed slice of the tax proceeds for the first time.

But hotel and motel officials subsequently balked at the suggestion that arts groups could spend the grant money for things like artist fees and producing exhibits, instead of just for advertising.

The tourism council lobbied hotels, motels and other visitor accommodations to support the successful effort last year to persuade county commissioners to increase the tax by 1 percentage point to 5 percent.

"Our industry was very skeptical at the imposition of the additional one penny tax,'' wrote H. Gregg Nicklaus of the Florida Restaurant and Lodging Association's Pinellas chapter.

''We were repeatedly told that all the increases in dollars collected would be used exclusively for the marketing and advertising of our destination.''

Members of the tourism council said Wednesday that they heard the same message from the hotel and motel business.

"We're dealing with tourism dollars and marketing,'' said council member Doreen Moore, owner of the condo management business Travel Resorts Services in Redington Beach.

"We have a responsibility to use them to bring people here.''

Pinellas County commissioners ultimately approve use of the tax money based on the recommendations of the council.

Commissioners would have had to change the county's tourist development plan to allow the tax to be used for other art funding besides marketing and advertising. On Wednesday, the council declined to recommend that change.

Steve Huettel can be reached at huettel@sptimes.com or (813) 226-3384.

[Last modified June 15, 2006, 05:52:54]