AUSTIN, Texas -- Travis County leaders want Austin to hold off any plans to increase its take of the hotel occupancy tax.
Commissioners discussed Tuesday their plans for the tax, which is leveled on visitors based on hotel room rates.
The rate is currently 15 percent. Six percent goes to the State of Texas, seven percent goes to local government as an occupancy tax, and the remaining two percent is a venue project tax. Local leaders can increase the venue project tax by an additional two percentage points, for a total tax of 17 percent.
That's the plan a city-appointed Visitor Impact Task Force recommends, so the Austin Convention Center can expand by as much as 50 percent. The Chair and Vice Chair did not return interview requests Tuesday from Spectrum News.
Bill Bunch, who is suing the Austin Convention and Visitors Bureau, is against how the tax is currently allocated and opposes how an increase is planned to be used. He said more than 80 percent of the hotel occupancy tax goes to a building that less than two percent of Austin visitors actually visit.
"It's an incredible mismatch on where the money is going to, versus the benefit we could be seeing if we put it somewhere else," he said.
Bunch wants to see the venue tax support attractions like Austin's live music scene, parks and pools. Venue managers have said they are at a tipping point and could be forced to close due to rising rents.
"As the city grows, we begin to lose cultural heirlooms," Precinct 1 Commissioner Jeff Travillion said. "The question becomes: what happens to the Palm [School]? What happens to Old [L.C.] Anderson [High School]? What happens to the Negro School?"
Travillion wants the Austin City Council to delay any decision about the convention center expansion until Travis County leaders determine their priorities for the tourism tax.
Expanding the convention center is expected to cost at least 600 million dollars.