In A Time When Communities Need More Revenue… It Is Time To Dramatically Lower The Room And Car Rental Taxes!

Tourism is major economic development for communities but the prevalent taxes levied on these consumers are archaic, inequitable and low yield.

You read correctly. If cities and counties want to get some serious revenue from tourism, it is time to dramatically reduce the ubiquitous tax rates levied on individual customers during check out on the rates paid for guest rooms in commercial lodging establishments and on car rentals.

Extremely small proportions of travelers overall utilize commercial lodging or car rentals so double digit tax rates on just these two areas collect far, far less than a 1% or less tax shouldered by every type of visitor and equitably across all visitor expenditures would generate much, much, more revenue and it would be much more equitable as well.

First the replacement tax would need to reach travelers as they pay for gasoline or transportation, dining, shopping and entertainment admissions etc.

The trick is how to avoid residents who pay for those services so it may not be a sales tax and instead a gross receipts tax calibrated to the proportion of revenue each type of business receives from visitors.

Yes, that is possible to determine for each community through tools like ImPlan. It would also be possible to vary rates within business type, say based on whether the car rentals are for travelers are accident insurance claims or individual travelers vs. guest rooms purchased in bulk by major corporations etc.

This could be done as “tourism” improvement districts based on a type of business vs. just geography. The rationale can be not only to self fund community marketing and promotion but to fund infrastructure and services used by all travelers.

The options are endless but one thing is for sure. Continuing to go down the road of levying taxes on a very few travelers is, well a dead end.

Of course, this change in the status quo would mean an end to the stupid comments in so many Chamber of Commerce board rooms where some types of businesses, e.g. lawyers and TV stations, are so willing to throw visitor related businesses under the bus for higher taxes because “we” don’t pay them.a

An end to the status quo would also be an end to whining by sports teams, eager to tax lodging or car rentals to pay for facilities but virtually apoplectic over admissions taxes and of course restaurant associations who say nothing when taxes are increased on hotels but threaten seppuku over taxes on prepared food while at the same time claiming a third of revenue is from visitors.

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Immigrants Have Always Fueled This Country

Thomas Friedman’s op-ed in the NYT’s makes an excellent argument for both immigration reform and job creation.  While the salvaging some major employers kept us from slipping deeper into recession, the established employers aren’t the businesses that generated great job growth over the 25 years up to 2005.

The jobs were created by new business start-ups, often fueled by what Friedman calls high I-Q risk takers like many we have here in Durham both at Duke University and North Carolina Central University.

Mr. Friedman makes a great argument for innovative changes in immigration that keep those students here after graduation.  It is also why what Durham native Christopher Gergen is doing with Bull City Forward to stimulate even greater evolution of social entrepreneurs, is right on target.

Far More People Love Duke!

I wasn’t surprised when a reporter, editor or columnist decided to superimpose his or her disfavor of Duke basketball as a generalized opinion.  I just continue to be surprised or maybe dismayed is a better word at how many others in journalism fall for it and jump on the bandwagon before they have facts.  Maybe it is deliberate, maybe not, maybe it is to milk a storyline, maybe not, maybe it is laziness, maybe not, maybe it is because news is anecdotal by nature and rarely focuses on what is generalizable, maybe not.  But to me and I’ll bet many others, is annoying and plays with people’s minds and not good journalism.

One thing is for sure, win or lose today in the Final Four, scientific, generalizable research shows the Duke men’s basketball program is the most popular in Durham, in the home areas of some of its closest rivals and tied as the most popular nationwide with a school in nearby Chapel Hill.

Because the anti-Duke sentiment often tries to outshout and superimpose itself even here in Durham and in nearby communities with news media that attempt to cover Durham news,  DCVB and Dr. Mitch Javidi, twice this decade conducted scientifically public opinion polls, once when Duke won the national championship and again when UNC-Chapel Hill did (click to enlarge the chart) and each time Duke surveyed as the most popular in Durham and in surrounding counties, even in a year when a rival was winning it all.

For a naysayer, I even had to dig out the percentage of population who are UNC-Chapel Hill alumni to illustrate that even if they were all UNC fans, it would still be generalizable that Duke is a favorite.  People forget that to a lot of North Carolinians, Durham is as native to the state as state schools and in Durham and many other areas, much of the population is not native anyway.

The nationwide Harris poll, conducted early last month as March madness began in college basketball confirmed that nationwide Duke and UNC-Chapel Hill are indeed tied as most favorite.

Whatever the motive and/or maybe ignorance of the person or persons who started the “EVERYBODY HATES DUKE” diatribe of the last several weeks, it is clear even those who control the “ink,” even when they “copy-cat,” can’t superimpose their opinions.   The reason people love Duke.  In Durham it is the home team but nationwide, probably because people love winners, love excellent and frequently see the games on television.  To be sure, that would require a deeper survey.

Go Duke! – but win or lose – don’t buy all of the crap about “everybody hates Duke” even if you hate Duke.  It isn’t even close to being fact, no matter how often it is said, loud it is shouted or repeatedly reported.

How Does a Personal Weather Station Work!

A few readers have asked me offline how one of my many avocations in retirement, weather monitoring, works.  I’m sure there are lots of ways. 

Below is a screen capture of the station I maintain and as it appears on a website.  Some information, e.g. soil moisture is just for my use and doesn’t appear here.  But the rest uploads every five minutes via the Internet along with 8,000 others in North America and 10 or so in various parts of Durham to the Citizen Weather Observer Program (CWOP.)   

The date goes through a quality check and then to the NOAA server (National Oceanic And Atmospheric Administration.)

From there it is accessed by 500 different users including the National Weather Service and the others on this partial list.:

NWS Weather Forecast Offices

National Center for Environmental Prediction

National Ocean Service

National Transportation Safety Board

National Center for Atmospheric Research

Department of Homeland Security

Denver Urban Drainage and Flood Control District

Colorado Avalanche Information Center

Kennedy Space Center

NASA Marshall Space Flight Center

University Corporation for Atmospheric Research

Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University

MIT Lincoln Laboratories

University of Utah

Penn State University

Mississippi State University

University of Alaska

University of North Dakota

Hampton University

Texas A&M University

University of Hawaii

Florida State University

Weather Underground

It is interesting, fun and useful. I can also use info from my station via www.weatherunderground.com to map storms and cloud cover or temperature and precipitation when I go for a ride like I did today to Asheboro and back to take in the air museum and the great Harley museum there.

My Dad Hated FDR but Loved the REA!

My Dad’s side of my family always seemed so conservative, so Republican through and through.  But part of my Mom’s side was definitely Democrat and probably today would be called liberal and proud of it.  Both sides came from good pioneer stock and very much helped settled the Western part of this great nation.  So I’ve had six decades of hearing very partisan arguments at any gathering of family.  Of course, in formative years I was far more surrounded on a daily if not weekly basis by the Republican side.

I probably owe my predisposition for critical thinking and being accepting and tolerance (they call that liberal) to a reaction to listening to parents, aunts, uncles, grandparents and great grand parents argue every position imaginable.  But definitely not because they were accepting.  Actually they knew I was growing up “on the other side” but it wasn’t clear to me until I moved away from home and realized that my hero and in today’s terms definitely “liberal” Senator Frank Church of Idaho, ‘57-‘81, the only Democrat re-elected to the Senate from that state, was indeed an anomaly.

As I great up surrounded by my Dad’s family, they, like most folks in the Yellowstone-Teton region of Eastern Idaho were very, very, very conservative and it seemed, nearly all Republican and very distrustful of big government and any government was pretty much considered big.

But one thing that side of my family hailed over and over was the “big government” that brought electricity to ranches and farms like the one I was born on and that had been homesteaded by my Grandparents and Great Grandparents.  It transformed their lives and their quality of life.  And if it hadn’t been for the Rural Electrification Administration (REA) that part of Idaho would probably still be waiting for the private sector utilities to believe it could be financially viable to run electricity there.

Recalling their heartfelt gratitude for that “big government” program is what makes me realize that although that part of my family would probably be Tea Party sympathizers were they alive today, “big government” is just a symbolically pejorative term.  In reality, “Big Government” is a very relative thing and ironically, if it weren’t for “Big Government,” talk-show millionaires wouldn’t be fill the heads of people like them with senseless vitriol.

The REA  is not unlike the healthcare insurance reform just passed or the proposal by the FCC to rapidly expand access to broadband.   It involved grants and coops and mandates etc.  It came about over strenuous opposition and all kinds of dire predictions and labels like “socialism.”  But virtually no one now can even imagine that what it accomplished would have happened any other way, nor that it isn’t one of the greatest things that happened to this country.  And what the REA achieved created an economic and social miracle.

Some in that part of my family, like my Father, apparently like some in the Tea Party, were also racist.  Oh, they didn’t think they were racist because they were tolerant of individuals they knew who happened to be of different ethnicities and cultures.  But boy they sure sounded and acted racist, talking about groups and individuals with which they were not personally familiar.  I can recall how many people across the country for instance reacted with a similar anger to the Civil Rights Act of 1964, fueling a politically conservative frenzy later that year.

And yet today, the act is a given and very much symbolic of what this country is about and it is clear, because of the act, we’ve come a long way toward measuring up to our ideals.