Background:

The issue began when Commissioner Rich Paces was tasked by Judge Kelly to figure out how to pay for the repairs and improvements to the Youth Event Center/Ag Barn after the bond was defeated. A Hotel Occupancy Tax (HOT) has been suggested as the solution by our County Commissioners. Liberty in Action does not support the implementation of any new tax.

Doing so sets a precedent for imposing new taxes whenever there’s a funding shortfall.

After promising NOT to file the HOT tax bill, Rep. Wes Virdell filed it anyway at the request of your entire commissioners court. We feel this is a bailout of our local government’s prior bad decision-making, like voting to use Biden’s ARPA funds (a one-time source of revenue) to pay for recurring expenses like three consecutive pay raises for the commissioners & all county employees (though, notably, Commissioner Rich Paces refused the pay raises). The majority voted for this with no way to pay for it moving forward after those funds were consumed. Also, Judge Kelly has budgeted $300,000 for outside legal counsel (most of which was needlessly expended to advise him on the 391) when the county already pays our county attorney for legal advice. Just by eliminating this budget item for the ‘outside counsel’ expense, we would nearly gain the amount projected to be collected through the HOT tax – $350,000/yr.

All three LIA supported commissioners have gone all-in on imposing this new tax under the guise that ‘other people pay it.’

It seems they’ve all swallowed the ‘other people’s money’ and ‘it’s for the children’ approach. HOT is a targeted tax on mom and pop businesses in Kerr County. It’s championed by the same crowd that worked against the election of these very same commissioners – chiefly County Judge Rob Kelly and his chief propagandist Louis Amestoy.

…when the new head of a government entity gets captured by the deep state interests within the agency and forgets the taxpayers they were hired to represent.

Time will tell if this trend continues among the commissioners and Rep. Virdell. They need to hear from you and they need our prayers. The lure of spending ‘other people’s money’ is powerful. Those who don’t get captured by the government are a rare exception.

HERE’S WHAT HAPPENED…

When we asked Rep. Virdell to pull the bill down, his response was to ask me to agree to meet with him and the commissioners, and thus required it to be posted as a public meeting. It was supposed to be a dialogue where each would get the chance to lay out their arguments, presumably to assist Virdell in deciding how to proceed. Instead, the commissioners assembled a rushed meeting hosted by the Kerr County Stock Show Association. It was a pro-HOT tax panel with no one from the other side given a platform to state their arguments against.
LIA was relegated to audience members who had to rely on short questions and quick comments to get their points across to the hand-picked, friendly crowd. It was NOT a fair fight. It was NOT an open forum. Shutting down the opposition and controlling the narrative in front of the press achieved the intended outcome. The headline was: ‘Hotel fee plan gains public support.’ This was a hastily called public meeting at 9 AM on a Monday morning with only a few days’ notice.

How is anyone with a job supposed to attend? It was a railroad job.

Why Should You Care?

THAT’S WHERE YOU COME IN.

Why should you care about a tax that doesn’t directly affect you? Because it’s now obvious the extent the County will go to push a new tax in order to take attention away from the mismanagement of the Hill Country Youth Event Center.
According to the management company that runs the facility, it’s running a $400,000 deficit annually! Obviously that is unsustainable. They tried to blame it on all the non-profits that use it for free, like 4-H, the stock show, and the political parties for each election. On the contrary, 4-H is regularly told they cannot use it if it’s rented out. 4-H is typically bumped from the space they’ve reserved in order to make way for paying customers. So that is not the reason for the deficit. Paces even stated in his own presentation that the most critical repairs have already been paid for and the proposed improvements are ‘nice to have but not critical.’ Why would we levy a new tax for ‘nice to have’ upgrades?

Why would we levy a new tax for ‘nice to have’ upgrades?

Gov. Abbott and Lt Gov Patrick are so tired of local government overspending erasing their property tax relief efforts at the state level that they’re advocating a 2/3 vote of the people in order to increase property tax. Local government spending is a massive problem across Texas, and it’s certainly not unique to Kerr County.

What you tolerate, you get more of.

WHAT DID WE ELECT THEM TO DO?

We the people elected the new commissioners to push back on out-of-control spending. Despite touting ‘no new revenue’ budgets, property taxes and spending continue to rise year after year. Even during COVID, Kerr County was blessed to see a rise in tax revenues.

(Yet they can’t pay for maintenance on a building they rent out practically every weekend?)

Key Questions

Here’s the fundamental problem:

If we give government new tools to tax and spend, it only proliferates the bad behavior of tax and spend.

• Why would the county re-examine or re-visit the budget & expenses if they’re granted bailout after bailout with new taxing methods?
• Is it a core function of government to promote tourism?
• Is levying ANY new tax in keeping with Republican core principles or the party platform?
  
• Aren’t we taxed enough already?

Perhaps the most important question:

Should the court be given the power to impose another new, forever tax for one-time upgrades?

• Should we allow the government to pick winners and losers, subsidizing tourist businesses (HOT can only be used on tourism) and not others?

Take Action

Ask the commissioners to explore other funding options such as…

• Approaching the Peterson and /or Cailloux foundation. We’re blessed to have them in our county, and they have funds to help with community projects.
• Asking local businesses and foundations to put their money where their mouth is (supporting our youth) to come up with the needed repairs.
• Setting up an endowment fund to cover the improvements and prevent losses on Hill Country Youth Event Center.

AND call the court’s general number…

Call Rep. Virdell

Call Senator Flores