A 10-year renewal for the Columbus tourism tax easily passed the House this week and will now be considered by the state Senate.
The House approved the local and private bill by a 105-8 margin on Thursday. The current tax, passed in 2019, is set to expire this year if not renewed.
District 41 Rep. Kabir Karriem (D-Columbus), who authored the bill, said most local and private legislation has four year terms, but the city and county provided enough justification for a longer renewal term for the House, at least, to approve.
“It wasn’t unprecedented, but it’s also not a normal ask,” Karriem said. “I’m just glad the leadership saw the need. There are certain financial responsibilities that the entities involved have and the 10-year term makes it a lot better.”
The bill now goes to the Senate’s Local and Private Committee for consideration. The Senate also has its own version of the bill, Senate Bill 3058, authored by Sen. Chuck Younger (R-Lowndes County).
“We’ll pass theirs and they’ll pass ours,” Younger said. “There shouldn’t be any hiccups over it. It ought to pass relatively easily.”
The 2-percent sales tax is collected from prepared food and beverage sales at businesses in the city limits where those sales make up at $100,000 of their annual gross revenue.
From those proceeds, Columbus receives $400,000 and Lowndes County $300,000 annually for recreation, the Golden Triangle Development LINK receives $250,000 for economic development efforts and the remainder goes to the Columbus-Convention and Visitors Bureau for tourism promotion.
In 2021, total tax collections were $2.055 million, of which $1.1 million funneled to the CVB.
Nancy Carpenter, CEO and executive director for the CVB, said Mississippi Development Authority’s tourism and economic contribution report showed $115 million spent by visitors to Columbus and Lowndes County in 2021, one of the largest collection years for the tax.
City and county leaders believe the 10-year renewal will provide more stability to better leverage the money for ongoing recreation projects.
The city will apply the money toward renovating Propst Park.
“We are working on what improvements we can do to the park to make it more attractive and help people feel safe there,” Mayor Keith Gaskin said. “(We are) also looking for new ideas of things we can bring to the park that would make it a destination point. We think if we’re able to bring Propst Park back, then in turn, it will have an effect on that whole area of the city.”
Lowndes County Board of Supervisors President Trip Hairston said the county’s share of the money will be used to offset debt for the $12 million sportsplex under construction off Highway 82 west of Columbus.
“We’ve got a 12-year note we are going to pay for,” Hairston said. “That’s paying for the construction of that facility. This money helps offset the cost to the county to service the debt and provide recreation in the county.”
Disputes between the city and county led to the tax being lost for a year in 2018. With both agreeing to work together this time around, legislators wanted to make sure there wasn’t a repeat. The deadline for renewal is in March.
“We just wanted to make sure we didn’t lose our sales tax in the near future,” Karriem said.
You can help your community
Quality, in-depth journalism is essential to a healthy community. The Dispatch brings you the most complete reporting and insightful commentary in the Golden Triangle, but we need your help to continue our efforts. In the past week, our reporters have posted 44 articles to cdispatch.com. Please consider subscribing to our website for only $2.30 per week to help support local journalism and our community.
You can help your community
Quality, in-depth journalism is essential to a healthy community. The Dispatch brings you the most complete reporting and insightful commentary in the Golden Triangle, but we need your help to continue our efforts. In the past week, our reporters have posted 44 articles to cdispatch.com. Please consider subscribing to our website for only $2.30 per week to help support local journalism and our community.
