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Summit County Council Discussing Restaurant Tax And Tourism Over Summer & Fall

Summit Count Council meets Wednesday afternoon to discuss how to balance keeping the tourism economy running while also keeping citizens safe.

Summit County Council meets remotely via video chat Wednesday at 4:30. First on the council’s work agenda is a discussion about the $2.9 million collected via the county restaurant tax in 2019. The county restaurant tax is redistributed through grants to applicants who use the funds for activities to increase visitation in the county.  

County Manager Tom Fisher says the council conversation will center around how to spend the money if people won’t be allowed to gather in large groups. 

“The idea that at the same time we're trying to pull a lot of people in from other places and still fight this emerging threat seems incongruent,” Fisher continued. “But a lot of these traditional ways that we've done business, and granted to under the restaurant tax, haven't had the opportunity over the last two months to react to that yet. So, I think we're going to have to have ongoing conversations about this as this grant money gets put out to the community. In order to make sure that doing things holistically and supporting everything that we want to accomplish. There's going to be a level of business activity and there's still going to be restrictions on. That ongoing balance is going to have to be dealt with in the restaurant tax recommendations as well.” 

Fisher says there might even be a possibility that they allow grantees to hold funds over to next year. 

“If an organization gets granted, can't spend the money this year, but plan to do the same event next year when there may be less restrictions, perhaps a deadline to be extended in order to make that happen,” Fisher explained. “Especially when we expect revenues to be a lot less next year and we might want to spark more activity next year.” 

Fisher says the council will be analyzing what sort of flexibilities they have with using the tax money as needed. 

The council will also hear from Park City Chamber Bureau President Bill Malone, as part of a public discussion about how to market the area for tourism as restrictions lift. 

In his presentation Malone points out that non-team outdoor recreation and road trips have been viewed as safe activities according to surveys of potential tourists. On the other hand cruise line and international travel have been rated as unsafe. Fisher says that makes destinations like Summit County very attractive to visitors. Again, the council will discuss balancing the counties main economic industry with the welfare of residents.  

One looming factor is whether Park City Mountain Resort and Deer Valley Resort will open for the summer. Fisher says he doesn’t want to speak for the resorts, but he imagines at some point they’ll want to reopen. 

“We're going to be having to work closely with them from a health perspective on how to do that,” Fisher said. “Because they're going to have to manage gatherings, they're going to have to manage how to keep people in large groups safe, as they navigate different activities. I'm sure they have plans for that because they have a lot riding on that as well.” 

Fisher says council will also likely be discussing a new health order as the county is expected to move from the orange moderate risk phase to the yellow low risk phase later this week.

KPCW reporter David Boyle covers all things in the Heber Valley as well as sports and breaking news.
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