The budget meeting, with regard to any upgrades at the Big Sandy Superstore Arena, resolved... absolutely nothing. These budget meetings have apparently all been regarding current operating budgets--nothing to do with upgrades like the ones we're all crossing our fingers for. So the city is first going to sort out their budget, and THEN shoehorn in bond payments--a bit of a pain in the ass IMO. Word is that the braintrust has something in the cards to generate extra revenue, which hopefully could spill over into new shiny things for the Arena; if not let me put forward this idea:
*ahem*
The bond is $5.1mil, which after interest--a large chunk of which would, since these are Recovery Zone bonds, be paid back by the federal government--I estimate at something like $5.2million.
$5,200,000/20yrs=$260,000
$260,000/365=$712.33/day would need to be generated by a hotel tax.
My estimate is that there are about that many hotel rooms in Huntington city limits, but to be safe let's assume that half the rooms in Huntington will be empty on any given day. $2 would cover our expenses, and if we figure an average hotel room to be, say, $100, it would only be a 2% tax at that. We could go higher if need be. But my point is that this can be done without a whole lot of bloodletting.
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