Council retains hotel tax control

Published 9:00 pm Thursday, December 25, 2003

EVERETT — In an echo of the Salty Sea Days controversy, the Everett City Council Wednesday voted against reducing the role its budget committee has in deciding how hotel tax money is spent.

In July, City Councilmen Mark Olson and Bob Overstreet criticized budget committee Chairman Dale Pope for voting in committee meetings on the distribution of hotel tax revenue even though one of the top recipients of the tax money was the Salty Sea Days festival. The festival was run by Pope’s wife, Marion.

The controversy led Marion Pope to resign as executive director of the Salty Sea Days Association and spurred the City Council to end a contract that guaranteed tax money for the festival. It also may have played a part in Dale Pope’s landslide loss in his November re-election bid.

Olson said Wednesday that the budget committee should not make the initial recommendation on how to distribute the money. Instead, he proposed letting the lodging tax advisory committee, which includes representatives of Everett hotels and non-profit groups, directly advise the City Council on how to spend the money.

"The current system does not work and has not worked, or we wouldn’t have had the controversy we’ve had over the past four or five months," he said after the meeting.

The council voted 5-2 to reject the plan, with only Overstreet joining Olson in supporting a change.

"That means the budget and finance committee still runs the show," said Olson, who is one of three members of the budget committee. "The way it’s set up now, the advice from the lodging tax advisory committee is meaningless."

But Councilman Doug Campbell said the budget committee knows best how much tax money is available to distribute and whether the city should carry over some tax money and spend it the following year.

"It’s the budget and finance committee’s job to look at revenues," said Dale Pope, whose city council term ends next week. "This process has been working well. You take the credibility out of the process if you take the budget committee out it."

Overstreet and Olson said that the change would have streamlined the process.

Under the process that the city council voted to keep, the budget committee solicits and then reviews proposals from groups that want part of the hotel tax money, makes recommendations on how the money should be spent, and sends those recommendations to the lodging tax committee.

The lodging tax committee then sends comments back to the budget committee, which sends its final recommendations to the full City Council.

"What is the point of having it go back to the same folks who have already decided how the money will be spent?" Olson asked. "It makes a mockery of a citizens advisory committee."

Under Olson’s proposal, the lodging tax committee would have directly advised the city council, which still would have had the final say on the matter.

The budget committee has not yet formally asked non-profit groups to submit requests for hotel tax money. Councilman Ron Gipson, who will take over as budget-committee chair in January, said the committee will likely do so within the next few weeks.

The city expects to receive about $200,000 in hotel tax money next year, but all but $47,000 of that is tied up in long-term contracts with the Everett Events Center and Everett Memorial Stadium.

Reporter David Olson: 425-339-3452 or dolson@heraldnet.com.