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Will county be penny-wise, pound-dopey?

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By TOM JACKSON

tjackson@tampatrib.com

Published: May 6, 2009

Consider the penny. Spot one on the sidewalk, most of us won't even bother to stoop to pick it up. Need-a-penny/leave-a-penny trays are everywhere, most of them full.

Despite deflation, a penny might not even purchase a proverbial thought. Is a penny saved still a penny earned?

We added a penny to Pasco's sales tax collections a few years back, and - Minuteman Bill Bunting notwithstanding - Armageddon did not ensue.

Similar thinking has rooted within the county's Tourist Development Council. Asked by county commissioners to render its opinion regarding a penny hike in the pillow tax, a narrow majority of the TDC membership said: Hike away.

C'mon, stay awhile

There is much to like about the increase, beginning with: Who's going to notice, anyway? Spend a weekend in the best accommodations offered by the new Homewood Suites in Port Richey, you're out maybe an extra $3. Chump change.

Better yet, visitors, ostensibly, pay the tax; Pasco would still trail Hillsborough, Pinellas and Polk counties, and there may be a way to legally finesse some of the collections into Pasco's general fund.

It's all good, right? After all, as famed innkeeper Pat Mulieri, who moonlights as a county commissioner, has noted, nobody looks at taxes when they book a room; they only look at the overnight rate.

Interestingly, in her role as an elected official, Mulieri represents the district containing Pasco's single largest tourist tax contributor, which would be Saddlebrook Resort, famous for golf, tennis, deep-tissue massages and large-group retreats and conferences.

Saddlebrook is to Pasco what Busch Gardens is to Hillsborough, what Sand Key is to Pinellas, and what nearby Disney-area theme parks are to Polk: the foremost reason large numbers of out-of-towners have for unpacking their suitcases.

Neither bashful nor grumpy

Now, despite the assurances of Mulieri, conference organizers are less likely to study the overnight room rate and more likely to compare packages to available budgets. The fellow booking 100 rooms for a week knows only that he has to squeeze rooms, meals and other amenities under a specified bottom line.

At 2 percent per room per night, Saddlebrook - remember, by far the chief contributor to Pasco's tourist tax treasury - has appreciably more ability to woo the conference shopper than it does at 3 percent.

Consider: Standard guest rooms typically go for $150 per night. At 2 percent, that's $3. Multiplied by 100 rooms and 7 nights, that's a $2,100 bite for a single one-week conference. Bump the tax by a penny, now it becomes a $3,150 line item in the conference budget - not the client's, the resort's. Two facts work against being able to pass on a tax increase: the client's budget and opportunistic competitors.

In short, Mulieri notwithstanding, the resort lacks the luxury of tacking on the extra $1,050 at the end of the conferees' stay. It has to find the dollars elsewhere. Fewer food options? Less golf? Less court time? Does it turn access to amenities into a la carte extras and risk losing business to competing resorts (in, let's face it, more glamorous locations)?

Or does it delay a landscaping project or a capital improvement? Or does it stall expansion of its staff? Those options, if realized, would dampen the local economy. But they are questions Saddlebrook's management would have to weigh arising from a single conference over the bite taken by the hike commissioners are proposing - because Mulieri says travelers look only at the room rate.

The county hasn't even demonstrated that it can broker a deal on one of the bricks-and-mortar projects the tax was designed to fund. And now they're talking about raising the fee? At the risk of evoking another Florida tourist destination, that's just dopey.

Or as they used to say in the old country, penny-wise and pound-foolish.

Tom Jackson can be reached at (813)259-7068. Keyword: The Jax Files for bonus musings.

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