REGIONAL AIRPORT Hoteliers: No room for tax

Trumbull County hotel guests now pay taxes up to about 11.5 percent.
By STEPHEN SIFF
and PEGGY SINKOVICH
VINDICATOR TRUMBULL STAFF
Local hotel operators say business is bad enough without a tax increase for an airport that doesn't bring in customers.
Last week, the state Legislature approved a budget that included a provision that would allow Trumbull and Mahoning counties to increase the bed tax to 5 percent. The law would also allow most of the money collected by the tax to be used to subsidize Youngstown-Warren Regional Airport.
"This is going to be bad for me," said Mahendra Jain, owner of Niles Inn on Youngstown-Warren Road, where, he says, revenues are down 50 percent compared with 2001.
"Already, the economy is down and people aren't coming in the way they were before," he said.
Trumbull County hotel guests now pay taxes up to about 11.5 percent, depending on where they stay. That includes sales tax -- increased this year from 5.5 percent to 6 percent -- and a township bed tax of 3 percent in some areas, as well the current county bed tax of 2.5 percent.
The bed tax in Mahoning County is 3 percent.
Until the new law passed, all county bed tax money was required to go to the convention and visitors bureaus, which promote tourism.
The amount of bed tax each county will put toward funding the Western Reserve Port Authority, which owns the airport, will be decided in conversations between the counties over the next weeks and months, said Trumbull County Commissioner Joseph J. Angelo Jr., who championed the new law.
The two counties contribute equally to the port authority.
Angelo estimated an additional bed tax of 2 percent to 3 percent would likely raise enough money to keep the airport afloat, but the hard numbers have not been calculated.
The extent of funding going to the convention and visitors bureaus in each county will also be worked out, he said.
"The main reason the law was written was to help fund the airport until they can stand on their own," Angelo said. "This takes the airport out of the hands of local politicians."
Richard Alberini, chairman of the Trumbull County CVB, doesn't have problems with the plan, as long bureau funds aren't cut.
"The airport is necessary to bring in new business," he said.
No help
However, hotel and motel owners say the airport does nothing to help them. No change in business was detected when the last commercial flight took off from the airport a year ago, they say.
"This already is not the greatest place to have a hotel and the higher taxes won't help," said Dick Patel, manager of Days Inn in Warren.
"If that tax would help us, like if a theme park was going to be built, then I would say OK, but this tax doesn't help us.
"It won't bring in more customers."