Amador County – Plymouth voters narrowly rejected a city-wide Transient Occupancy Tax increase during the general election November 2nd, but did approve an accompanying, non-binding advisory that would have suggested how the city would have used the funding.
City Manager Dixon Flynn said he would try to take the issue back to the council, to attempt the initiative again, but he would first try to get information out about the tax, and who pays it.
He said he thought the initiative, Measure O, failed because people thought it was a tax they would have to pay. He said they did not realize that it was a “tourist tax.”
With 528 eligible voters for the vote, Plymouth needed 265 votes to clinch a decision on each of its two measures. Instead, Measure O lost by a 32-vote margin, 169-137, while Measure P passed on a 158-139 vote.
Plymouth’s Measure O would have enacted an ordinance “increasing the transient occupancy tax to 10 percent of the rent charged by hotel operators within the city limits, with tax revenue to be used for general municipal purposes.” Its passage would have enacted a 4 percent increase in the city’s Transient Occupancy Tax, raising it from 6 percent to 10 percent.
Measure P asked Plymouth voters to decide if 2 percent of the revenue from the TOT increase should “be used for streets, parking and landscaping, and the remaining two percent for tourism including promotions, events, signage, advertising and other related expenses.”
Former City Attorney Steven Rudolph said the “transient occupancy tax is a type of tax that a city may levy on the privilege of occupying a room in a hotel or a similar place of lodging within a city.”
A simple majority – 50 percent plus one vote – of registered Plymouth voters would have allowed the measures to pass.
The six percent Transient Occupancy Tax in Plymouth has remained the same since the tax went into effect in 1980. Plymouth’s six percent TOT tax raised $75,000 last year, and the four percent increase would have added approximately $50,000 to that total.
The election office said it had not yet counted all ballots, but hoped to do so this week. There remained an estimated 1,700 to 1,800 absentee and mail ballots from all points in the county that could still be counted if they qualify.
Story by Jim Reece This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
