Spending the New Revenue

The hotels, inns, B&Bs, and Airbnbs of Hudson started collecting a 4 percent lodging tax on the first of June 2017. The law that established the tax--Chapter 275, Article VIII of the City Code, enacted in March 2017--also created a Tourism Board "empowered to take all reasonable steps it determines desirable, necessary and proper to market the City of Hudson as a destination for overnight and daytrip visitors by making use of the funds set aside by the City Treasurer."  

The funds set aside by the City Treasurer are a percentage of the revenue from the lodging tax: 50 percent of the first $250,000; 25 percent of the second $250,000; 10 percent of everything beyond $500,000, not to exceed $250,000 a year.

The law also outlined who would serve on the board: the chair of the Common Council Arts, Entertainment & Tourism Committee would chair the Tourism Board; the mayor would appoint one member of the board; the Common Council would appoint another; the other six members would be elected by the board itself. At the beginning of 2018, Tom DePietro, new Council president, eliminated the Arts, Entertainment & Tourism Committee, a standing committee that was created in 2000, at the beginning of the Cranna administration, thus leaving the Tourism Board without a chair. 

On Monday, an amendment to the City Code was introduced, altering how the tourism board would be formed. The chair of the Economic Development Committee, which was created in 2010 when Don Moore was president of the Common Council, will be the chair of the Tourism Board. That position is currently held by Rich Volo (Fourth Ward). The mayor will appoint four members of the Tourism Board, and the Common Council will appoint four members of the Tourism Board. DePietro said of the changes in the formation of the board, addressing members of the Council: "It gives us more of a say in how that money gets spent."
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