Who gets the hotel tax money?

By DAVID HULSE

MATAMORAS, PA — Pike County business people heard a call for secession from the Poconos when they gathered on December 29 to learn about a proposed hotel occupancy tax.

Milford publisher and hotel owner Sean Strub organized and hosted the session at the Hunt’s Landing Best Western Hotel.

At issue was a three-percent hotel tax, now being considered by the Pike County Commissioners, plus who would spend it and how it would be spent. The state law calls for hotel tax money to be used to fund tourism marketing through an area tourism promotion agency (TPA). The Pocono Mountains Vacation Bureau (PMVB) is the designated TPA for Carbon, Monroe, Pike and Wayne counties.

All four counties would need to approve. The new tax would raise an estimated $3 million, some $800,000 of which would come from Pike hotel guests.

In summary, Strub said he believed that eastern Pike County has been poorly served by PMVB marketing, which has emphasized the region’s larger resorts, and proposed that a new group, the Pike County Hospitality Association, share Pike’s tax revenues with PMVB. Strub, business partner Richard Snyder, realtor Davis R. Chant and several others had formed the association informally two nights earlier.

Strub said that while the Poconos are a positive image for some, for others their image is one of “real estate fraud.” Pike County is branding itself as a place for eco-tourism, historic preservation and outdoor activity, he said. “Pike was never part of the Poconos,” Strub said.

Former Pike Commissioner and innkeeper Gerry Hansen agreed. “We are different. … We don’t think of ourselves as the Poconos; no cocktail glasses to spend the night; that’s not our image,” he said.

Several business people agreed, but others didn’t. Jim Reinhart of the Pocono Environmental Education Center saw no advantage in trying to market Pike County instead of the Poconos. “There’s strength in numbers,” he said.

Strub also criticized a plan that would direct $1 million of the new tax money annually, over the next three years, to bail out the financially troubled Mountain Laurel Performing Arts Center in Bushkill. He said that money could be better used to market a wide selection of smaller interests in the county.

Strub claimed that $1 million was being demanded by Governor Rendell, who was holding “a gun to the county’s head” by threatening to withhold new state support.

Listening to Strub’s remarks at the head table were Bob Uguccioni, executive director of the PMVB, Mountain Laurel Performing Arts Center CEO Richard Bryant, Pennsylvania Deputy Secretary for Tourism J. Mickey Rowley, and two members of his staff.

Rowley said the governor would like to see Mountain Laurel’s problems resolved and evidence of local support, but “there’s no gun,” he added.

Uguccioni, who said he had planned to listen only, found it necessary to apologize to those who had felt underserved by PMVB. He said the agency would work to do better.

While the hotel tax appeared in a budget plan Bryant distributed, Uguccioni also said that no agreement currently exists between Mountain Laurel and the PMVB for the use of the tax money.

But Uguccioni went on to say that the resorts had a legitimate interest in PMVB marketing decisions that would be based on the new tax. “Seventy-five to 80 percent of the money is coming from the big places.”

“Why aren’t they here tonight?” someone asked.

“Maybe they felt it wasn’t necessary to come here tonight. Maybe they feel the money belongs to them,” Uguccioni said.

“They need to be disabused of that feeling,” Strub replied. “They are the main collectors.”

Rowley said the county was free to name its own TPA, but he said the state does not like it when counties leave a marketing area group. “We would punish you. You’d get $5,000 versus $1 million,” he said. He suggested that the group move to change the PMVB rather than leave it.

“The issue is the hotel tax. I’ll be happy to collect it as long as it benefits Pike County,” Hansen said.

Monroe County has taken the first action and has already approved the new tax. Carbon and Wayne have not acted upon it. The Pike commissioners said earlier they have been discussing the tax issue but have taken no position. “Everything is still on the table,” said commissioners’ chair Harry Forbes.

While Strub said they had all been invited, none of the county commissioners appeared at the evening session.