Recommendation to receive and file a report on a proposed Transient Occupancy Tax Incentive Program.  (Citywide)
Okay. Next item, please. Report from economic and Property Development recommendation to receive and file a report on a proposed transient transient occupancy tax incentive program citywide. Mr. West. Mr. Mayor, council members, this is something we've been working on. For some time and we can bounce it off the city council. It has to. Do with the the. Distribution of some of our successor. Agency properties to potential hotels. Our assistant city manager, Tom Morgan. Is going to walk us through the proposal. Thank you, Mr. City Manager. Mr. Mayor. Members of the City Council. As the city manager, city manager mentioned, we are looking to give you an update on a proposed transit occupancy tax incentive program. For a long time, the city has had a very successful program for our retail sales tax, where we partner with our local businesses to grow business and also to grow city tax revenue through that program. That typically is a program where we agree to share a certain amount of sales tax over about a 15 year period in order to help grow the business and grow our sales tax at the same time. And it's been very successful with auto dealerships and a number of others. What we'd like to do is we'd like to, after looking at the market and seeing where hotel development is and looking at what a lot of our neighbors are doing in order to incentivize additional hotel development in our city, we are proposing to do a total incentive program, very similar to the sales tax rebate program in general. This program would utilize future TOT from a hotel project and contribute to the project cash flows, increasing the project's return on investment and making the project financially feasible with the goal of increasing this industry and also receiving additional total money for the city. This program would be available to new hotels with desired locations, design and operational characteristics. We would look at a minimum of 100 hotel rooms, a minimum total generation of $500,000, and we'd have to have an identified financial gap. The amount of the total to be shared would be would not exceed 50% of the net incremental growth, and it would expire upon reaching the agreed upon limit of city participation. So tonight, we're not asking for any action. We're essentially asking, you know, for you to receive and file an update. We are also going to be coming back. We're going to be certainly doing a pretty complex study to really look at the hotel market need and the gap and the general type and characteristics of those gaps. We'll be coming back with an analysis that identifies the location, design and operational characteristics of hotels that are more likely that are the likely ones to meet our city goals and encourages economic development. And we'll also be looking at other cities and their approaches to this market. With that, we expect to be back in in a couple of months and we stand by to answer any questions. Great. Thank you. I know that obviously any any sort of changes or any big policy decision will be made by the council once all the information is presented in a few months from now. Is that correct? Correct. We'd be looking for you to come back and actually establish the program similar to what we've done with the sales tax. Great. Thank you. Council. I'm sorry. Actually, we have a motion in a second. Let me first go through any public comment. No public comment. Councilman Richardson, any comments? Sure. I think this is it's smart and I think it puts us on par with other, larger cities. And I love that where, you know, we're potentially going to consider, you know, labor, peace and all those things with hotels over a hundred rooms. I look forward to seeing more. But at first glance, I think this is the good. This is good work on behalf of our city staff. Thanks. Thank you. Councilman Andrews, anything on your second note, Councilman Mongo. Thank you. I appreciate that. The city's gonna look at this from a very study based approach. I know that we've had some properties that have come up where people ask if it would be a good site for a hotel. We've had new hotels join the fifth District. And so with that, it's usually a call to other hotel owners or managers and or Steve Gooding at the CVB to kind of talk through those things. So I will appreciate the empirical data. I'll also appreciate that we continue to appreciate the hotels that are bringing in the total tax and make sure that they're on level playing field with any new competitor in the market to make sure that we all stand united, to bring the biggest conferences here and to bring the best. Opportunities for all of those. Organizations to the city. So thank you. Thank you, Councilman. Super not. Just a follow up on Councilwoman Mungo's statement, and it may be part of the study. Mr. MODICA You can address this. It may be in there already, but just the that we're going to analyze the existing hotels. And I'd say this about any industry, even auto dealerships that we don't create incentives that are favor the new folks more than the existing discounts. Remember, we're very much aware of that. And that's something we do want to look at. We are at this point looking at new construction, but we are very cognizant of what that type of incentive program does to other businesses. And we'll definitely be looking at that. Okay. See no other public I see no other council comment on this. Again, this is just to receive and file members. Please cast your vote. I did public comment. Councilwoman Pryce. Motion carries.