Aberdeen City Council Member Michael Hiob hopesto gain additional city funding from a swelling tourism and hotel industry.
He has been pushing a small daily surcharge on hotel bills as a way for Aberdeen to take advantage of its many hotels, which he said are drawing plenty of customers through Ripken Stadium, Aberdeen Proving Ground and related businesses. But before he can formally propose the tax, the state legislature has to pass a law giving the town the power to do so.
“Baltimore and Cecil counties already have hotel taxes. We?re sort of an island,” Hiob said.
Aberdeen ? already struggling with a $2 million deficit and a large proposed property tax increase in order to balance its budget ? has the hotel industry and the tourist traffic to make even a small tax productive, Hiob said. A portion of the funds collected would be reinvested in helping the industry attract more tourists, he said.
The town has about 17 hotels and motels, mostly clustered around the Route 40 corridor and Route 22, and two more are planned. Hotel customers are typically drawn to events at Ripken Stadium or business at Aberdeen Proving Ground, making them fairly reliable and unlikely to be driven off by a modest extra charge, Hiob said.
“If you?re already spending about $80 per night, will an extra two bucks or so drive people off? Of course not,” he said.
Hiob predicted the biggest challengers to his proposal would be the county?s legislators in the Statehouse and the hoteliers themselves.
“We feel it?s double-dipping. ? We already pay our property taxes,” said Monica Worrell, a vice president with the Hess Hotel Group, which owns three hotels in Harford County.
Harford hotels already charge less per day than their competitors in adjacent counties, she said. “It?s a selling advantage we would hate to lose.”
Harford County has not had the power to create a hotel tax since 1999, when the General Assemblypassed a bill stripping the county of the authority ? which it had never exercised.
