City must help cover Hilton's debt payments

[Marshan Man]

I was not speaking of the $300M since that was in all likelihood financed on bonds. I was speaking of the shortfalls. Covering that shortfall with the hotel tax may not pull money directly out of citizen taxpayers taxes it pulls form the same pot.

Yeah, but that would'vbe been a smaller pot if the hotel didn't exist to contribute to it.

The hotel contributed enough where the tax it collects form its guests is enough to pay for the shortfall. You'd have a stronger point if it required taxes collected from other hotels' guests.

[demopublican]

You would have a better point if you could show what additional real new business the hotel brought. Since none of the hotels downtown have full occupancy none of that revenue is new. It is just shifted from other hotel rooms that would have been sold. Maybe a few weekends a year for the Grand Prix (money pit).

[Marshan Man]

You would have a better point if you could show what additional real new business the hotel brought. Since none of the hotels downtown have full occupancy none of that revenue is new. It is just shifted from other hotel rooms that would have been sold. Maybe a few weekends a year for the Grand Prix (money pit).

There are more hotels now than there were then, and the avg. occupancy rate is higher now compared to then. So obviously the hotel market has expanded. There's your new business.

Get back to me when the market contracts...

[Freedomfighter]

The city's using money generated by the hotel to cover the payments so the hotel's paying for itself and a convention hotel was worth the investment.

Long term investments aren't generally profitable in their first four years, and daily room rate estimates were apparently quite generous in a pre-recession environment.

The first sentence is dead wrong. The mayor is spinning to justify using our tax dollars to cover their bills. Its like saying you paid 12500.00 in property taxes last year. That's your money so we're gonna give it back to help you pay your mortgage.

[Marshan Man]

The first sentence is dead wrong. The mayor is spinning to justify using our tax dollars to cover their bills. Its like saying you paid 12500.00 in property taxes last year. That's your money so we're gonna give it back to help you pay your mortgage.

Talk about wrong...Who quoted the mayor? I don't even think I've heard anything she's had to say about this...

[ybnormal]

To err is human, but to really foul things up takes Baltimore's City Hall. Mismanagement, corruption, all the ingredients necessary to implode the city. Total ineptocracy.

[Freedomfighter]

There are more hotels now than there were then, and the avg. occupancy rate is higher now compared to then. So obviously the hotel market has expanded. There's your new business.

Get back to me when the market contracts...

What part of city government do you work for?

[Marshan Man]

I don't work for city govt.

[Freedomfighter]

I don't work for city govt.

How long have you been woreking for BDC then?

[Eastside Terp]

dozens of threads on here predicting this since the city first decided to get in the hotel business when no private investors would put their money into this folly ......

even if it wasn't losing money, government should not be in the hotel business .......

about the same time as this, dixon wanted to get into the electric utility business .....