I want to commend you on your analysis of today’s Sunday News article. As I was developing my own thoughts and response, I read yours and you covered it spot on. Well done!
I do wish to expand on the “deception du jour” that LNP will use to detract all of our attention from the real issues and that is the discrepancy between Smith Travel Research (STR) and Lancaster County. At issue, why are STR’s number always higher (by as much as 15%) than the County figures…WHO CARES?
The tax receipts, which are carefully audited annually by the County Treasurer, are accurate. Please accept that from someone who is the recipient of these audits. As to why the unaudited, incomplete, and voluntary data from STR is off is anyone’s guess.
This is nothing more than a red herring but it is consistent with the reporting from LNP since day one. They are willing to cover just enough of the other side to stir controversy to create interest in their “reporting”. They don’t ask the tough questions or offer up all sides of the issue.
If Marv is looking for an exercise in full disclosure, I suggest that he compiles a full accounting of every dollar that PSP, High and each and every subsidiary of High has received since day one of this project and then give Nevin Cooley the opening three paragraphs of its next article to be the standard bearer for a hotel tax increase.
We can debate this one until the cows come home but I would prefer to focus on some of the real issues at hand:
~How can anyone claim a tax increase would have “no effect” when the 12-year track record on countywide occupancy since the implementation of the tax proves exactly the opposite?
~How can anyone boast a positive impact on rooms sold from CC overflow when the pittance that they report is dwarfed almost 2-to-1 by the vopumer the hotel takes from the marketplace?
~How can anyone say we are “doing great” at the center, which is supposed to be generating NEW (incremental) hotel sales while tax receipts to the County are totally flat (with more, not less delinquencies included)?
