MAHONING COUNTY 2 officials reject airport funds offered by visitors bureau

Two commissioners want to cut the bureau's funding by two-thirds.
By DAVID SKOLNICKand BOB JACKSON
VINDICATOR STAFF WRITERS
YOUNGSTOWN -- Two Mahoning County commissioners refused out of hand an offer from the Youngstown-Mahoning County Convention and Visitors Bureau to give $50,000 annually for three years to help fund the local airport.
Instead, Commissioners Ed Reese and Vicki Allen Sherlock say they'll move ahead with a plan to earmark two-thirds of the county's hotel bed tax to fund the Youngstown-Warren Regional Airport. David Ludt, the third commissioner, could not be reached Friday to comment.
"I'm against what they offered," Reese said of the bureau's offer.
The commissioners have assessed a 3 percent bed tax on the county since 1987, with the money going to fund the bureau. The tax brings in about $450,000 a year.
State law
The commissioners asked the bureau for $50,000 in May for the airport but got no response. Passed a month later was a state law that permits the commissioners in Mahoning, Trumbull and about four other counties in Ohio to impose an additional 2 percent bed tax and/or take control over the current bed tax to fund airports.
With that new law, the county commissioners could effectively eliminate future funding for the bureau.
The area lodging community opposes raising the bed tax, so the commissioners don't plan to increase it.
Sherlock and Reese said they aren't interested in the bureau's offer of $50,000 annual payment for three years to help pay for the operation of the airport. It's too little and too late, they say.
"I'm not interested in that," Sherlock said. "We're going to take 2 percent of the current tax and give it to the airport. That's the option. I'm ready to go forward with that."
That would mean about $300,000 in funding from Mahoning County toward the airport annually. The county gave $100,000 to the airport earlier this year. Trumbull County gave $187,000 this year to the Vienna-based airport.
Reese said he expects the bureau to file a lawsuit to stop the plan to cut its funding.
"I think it's premature to talk about that right now," said Atty. Lawrence Richards, CVB chairman.
Richards said he's disappointed at the commissioners' stance and believes such a drastic cut in funding will cripple the bureau's efforts to market the area.
"I think it's a slap in the face of the motel and tourism industry, really," Richards said.
Marketing program
Richards said the bureau had hoped to launch a $150,000 marketing program next year based on recommendations from a consultant it hired last year. With its funding source in jeopardy, though, the plan will probably be shelved.
"It's just going to mean a lot less people coming here for the motel industry," Richards said.
Another option, Reese said, is to dissolve the bureau, take the $600,000 the agency has saved during the past 14 years, and put that into the county's general fund. What would happen with the collection of the county's 3 percent bed tax would have to be determined, he said. But Reese said he prefers to leave the bureau with 1 percentage point of the bed tax and use the other 2 percentage points for the airport.
skolnick@vindy.combjackson@vindy.com