SHEBOYGAN, WI (WHBL) - Changes are coming to address how the Sheboygan area handles its room taxes.
The city's finance committee voted last night in favor of creating a new Tourism Commission to handle how the city uses its portion of the room tax. That's a statutory requirement under new state law and was championed by the hotel and lodging association. Mayor Mike Vandersteen says that law came in response to a number of cities failing to use those funds for tourism. "They siphoned off much of that money for operations in their city, and they want to try to prevent and reduce that from happening in the future."
The city currently contracts with the Chamber of Commerce to handle its tourism funding under the room tax, and has been handing over 70 percent of those funds. The change over to a tourism commission will take that distribution of funds out of the city's direct control. "They will decide how to spend them. But they still have to be spent on tourism activities, efforts to put heads in beds, and that's their total job to develop tourism." Vandersteen says the commission will have the option to rehire the Chamber, but will be able to make its own decision.
Vandersteen says while the city is allowed to keep 30 percent of those funds for itself, it tries to not use it as a general fund stopgap. "We still spend a lot of that on tourism activities. Things like special events on the 4th of July, it pays for police overtime, and other expenses that we have in staging events like that."
The city will be opening up the commission to the towns of Wilson and Sheboygan as well in an effort to consolidate services. The commission will also be required to have two members to represent local hotels. The two communities will have to approve the commission as well before it can be created, and the town of Wilson will need to raise its room tax to 8 percent in order to join the commission.