AIRPORT FUNDING Visitors bureau to decide on request

Hotel operators receive no benefit from the airport, the bureau's president says.
By DAVID SKOLNICK
VINDICATOR POLITICS WRITER
YOUNGSTOWN -- The Youngstown/Mahoning Convention and Visitors Bureau will decide July 23 whether it will give $50,000 to the county to help fund the airport.
The bureau will invite the county commissioners, the Western Reserve Port Authority, county hotel and motel operators, state Sen. Marc Dann, and state Rep. John Boccieri to the meeting.
Dann of Liberty, D-32nd, and Boccieri of New Middletown, D-61st, helped get state legislation passed to allow Mahoning and Trumbull counties to increase the bed tax and to take control away from local convention and visitors bureaus over the current bed tax to fund the Youngstown-Warren Regional Airport.
Lawrence Richards, the bureau's president, said he hasn't polled his fellow members about funding the airport. But Richards said he doesn't see how giving money to an airport with no commercial passenger flights promotes tourism and conventions in the county, which is the bureau's mission.
The bureau has saved $600,000 over the past 14 years to help promote a convention center if one were ever built in the county.
No airport benefit
"Hotel operators see nothing from the airport and the air base," Richards said. "Our money should be spent for tourism and conventions. Otherwise, we'd spend money promoting Lordstown [General Motors], to get Boeing here, or to fix roads. That's all important to the Valley, but it's not our mission."
During a May meeting with the commissioners and the port authority, which runs the airport, bureau board members were noncommittal to the $50,000 funding request.
But since then, state legislation was approved that gives the county commissioners authority to strip control from visitors bureaus over the hotel bed tax. The legislation also permits Mahoning and Trumbull counties to impose an increase of up to 2 percentage points in the bed tax. Mahoning's bed tax is 3 percent; Trumbull's is 2.5 percent.
If the commissioners opt to increase the bed tax by the full 2 percent, those staying at certain hotels in Mahoning would have a 15-percent tax added to their bill: the new 2 percent, the current 3 percent county bed tax, a 3-percent township tax, and the 7 percent state and county sales tax.
"We're hearing concern from hotel operators that people would go to other nearby places to pay less," Richards said. "An additional tax could hurt business."
Some local hotel and motel operators already are struggling, and Richards said he wouldn't be surprised to see a couple go out of business in the next six months even if the new tax isn't implemented.
Request from commissioners
The commissioners approached the bureau a few months ago about providing money for the financially struggling airport. The county, which also is having financial problems, was supposed to give the Vienna-based airport $187,000, the same amount already given by Trumbull County, to keep it operating.
Commissioners agreed last month to contribute $100,000 from its economic development fund, and asked the bureau to give $50,000, which would meet most of the $187,000 funding request.
Mahoning and Trumbull have struggled for years to find a stable revenue source for the airport. With that in mind, local legislators -- most notably state Rep. Sylvester D. Patton Jr. of Youngstown, D-60th, Dann and Boccieri -- got a bill passed last month to allow Mahoning, Trumbull and about four other counties in Ohio to increase their bed tax and take control over their current bed tax to fund airports adjacent to air bases.
Airport supporters say the future of the nearby Youngstown Air Reserve Station, which employs more than 2,000 people, is directly tied to the airport.
skolnick@vindy.com