So tonight we're going to talk about the public accommodations tax.

What you have before you know the packet is kind of a draft ordinance, I guess if you will.

The bulk of the revisions in the ordinance pertain to administrative and clerical corrections that we made or are proposing, I guess.

And I'll walk through each of those kind of one by one.

There are some policy components to this that have been brought up in various other conversations that staff doesn't necessarily have a strong opinion or a recommendation on them.

If you want to know some information, we've done some research and can provide some data.

But as far as far as we're concerned, and you may have heard otherwise, that's probably not true.

We don't have a recommendation as to the rate or applicability outside of what is currently being done.

But the again, the request was to review the ordinance, and uh again, in doing so, there's some administrative changes, and I guess I'll walk through those at this time.

I'll just go page by page, it's not very long, it's six pages and only about half a dozen or so uh change recommendations.

Uh so the first one to point out is in the definitions where it says public accommodation.

We added the term rental cabin.

Uh, rental cabins have always been included in the Title 17 definition for public accommodation, but it wasn't explicitly listed in this section of code.

So we're simply adding a uh an accommodation that frankly was already included in by definition.

Good.

And just to clarify, city manager, rental cabin is just what it sounds like the cabin that's for rent, or is it is there something else that I'm missing there?

No, yes, that's all it is.

As simple as that.

Yep, okay.

Uh the next one is on page three, uh, page three letter C.

We remove the one-time only waiver of penalty or tax returns filed after April 30th, 1994.

We figured that was no longer relevant.

Uh at the bottom is section E, uh, where it talks about returns to be confidential.

Uh, the language that's being proposed is also being reviewed by legal, but uh more or less it's to be in line with public records and FOIA uh statutes.

So that's what this language is is trying to embody.

But more or less is that returns are held confidential unless and until they're not allowed to be confidential any longer.

That's the basic premise of it.

Uh, more or less clarifying and cleaning up the language that was in there prior.

Again, that's it's still under uh revision and review by by legal to make sure that it's in compliance.

Uh the next one is where it talks about investigations by the city.

Uh, that was frankly, in our opinion, a lot of legal ease, and so we moved it up into the section above, tried to simplify it and make it uh again using a little bit more common language, but the again the basic premise isn't changing, is that if there's a suspicion that something is not being paid, we have the authority to look into it and ensure that proper taxes are being applied and uh people are paying what what's required.

Legal is looking at that as correct.

Um so in suits for collection.

Uh, in in reviewing this one, it talked about how unpaid taxes may be recovered by the guest.

Uh, that didn't make a lot of sense from a practical perspective, it should be the person providing the accommodation.

We also added or hosting platform because we do require uh Airbnbs and VRBOs, etc.

Those short-term rentals are hosted on a platform who by code are supposed to remit those taxes on their behalf.

Uh we have found that they don't.

Um so we're still trying to work through that.

Anyhow, long story short, the revision to this section is to remove the collection from the guest and put it on the proper party of the operator or the club the hosting platform.

Uh distribution of funds.

Uh so this uh this is probably more a conceptual revision than than anything.

Uh we don't currently follow the process in code.

What happens right now uh is that the well, at least for the last eight years, 100% of bed tax proceeds have roughly been appropriated towards the VCBB.

We don't necessarily follow this program where it goes into a public fund and then you can solicit grants, etc.

So the thought was if we're not doing it, let's not put it in code.

And so we remove that.

What it does do though is it does still allow for the city council to appropriate funds at your discretion.

That's not to say you couldn't set up a separate fund to distribute to some grant program or give them to any other purpose, but more or less our general philosophy has been if it's in code, we should do it or change it if we're not doing it.

And so because we're not doing it, the proposal is to change it to what is actually occurring and leave the door open for council to modify or adjust as you see fit.

Council has the you guys have the appropriating powers, you can assign funds as you see fit.

This section, uh, there's a little history on the code in the in the packet if you recall.

This section has changed numerous times.

Uh it's gone back and forth, and uh I again, based on current practice, I think it's best practice to to leave it at council's discretion to appropriate as you see fit.

But that's not to say that you can't or shouldn't develop some other program if you desire.

We do say in this uh ordinance though that it'll be utilized for economic development purposes.

So if that's not what you want, then you just need to give us direction, but we just simplified this.

Um this language like Nick said what we're actually doing.

So that's the reader's digest version of the administrative changes that we are proposing.

I don't know if there's any questions about any of that.