Clayton City Council passes Hotel-Motel 3% Tax Increase

The Clayton City Council passed a 3% tax increase on hotels and motels at their monthly meeting for May.  Clayton Mayor Kurt Cannon said this is in line with what the county and other cities are doing to generate more revenue to improve the things that visitors are already using.  “So, last year I think we started this process to move our hotel-motel tax from 5% to 8%.  We were the lowest in the region and we just felt like this was the right thing to do because all of these people are coming to our area and using our streets, water, and everything here but not paying anything for it.  We don’t want to put that burden on the local taxpayers, so that is what we did.  We are a tourist area, so it just kind of makes sense.  That additional money can be used for brick-and-mortar projects whereas the 5% could really only be used for marketing.  So, this will be a huge benefit for our community, and the county and other qualifying cities worked together on this.  We all agreed to do the exact same thing at the exact same time and so it was another really good partnership with the county and all the cities.”  The 3% tax increase on hotels and motels was unanimously approved by the Clayton City Council.