Town Toyota Center heating up to be a big regional issue!
If you haven’t heard, the Town Toyota Center is not meeting its financial objectives. The solution proposed by its Public Facilities District board is a 0.2% sales tax increase in the nine districts in its taxing area. Those districts include: Wenatchee, E. Wenatchee, Entiat, Cashmere, Chelan, Rock Island, Waterville and unincorporated Chelan and Douglas counties.
This morning, I wrote about the potential conflict this could set up in an election where citizens of Wenatchee are motivated to approve that tax increase and surrounding areas are not. There is also some further analysis that citizens should demand on how much of a sales tax increase it would take in just the city of Wenatchee, where the surrounding areas also spend a great amount of money, to meet the financial needs of the Town Toyota Center. Since Wenatchee gets most of the benefits of adjunct business from the Town Toyota Center and it is a regional shopping hub, that seems like it might be a better approach to the problem than taxing businesses in Waterville, Chelan and the rest of the area who don’t benefit from the arena. Read about it and comment at the Chelan Real Estate Blog!
