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It's time for chamber to
pay its fair share
Yes Virginia, there is a
Santa Claus!
Santa is none other than
the city of Key West and it's been giving the [Key West] Chamber of
Commerce a free ride on a quarter of a million dollars a year.
According to a Key West
Citizen story, "Market rates in that area can vary between $45 and $150
per square foot per month plus taxes, real estate insurance and
maintenance fees, according to local real estate experts. Some Realtors
have said the average monthly rent for the chamber building is about
$5,000 a month."
The range was reported
correctly, except that the figure is annual, not monthly. Even so, when
you multiply by the square footage (over 2700), the correct monthly rent
ranges from over $10,000 per month to over $30,000 per month. That's
double to six times the figure reported by The Citizen.
Some say the city should
take into account the improvements that the Chamber of Commerce has made
when it negotiates its $10 per month rent. That was the exact same thing
that the chamber said in 1995 when they succeeded in keeping their rent
at $10 for another decade.
The question is, hasn't
the city already paid for those improvements scores of times over and
when are we finally going to start collecting on them? For crying out
loud, the chamber put a new roof on the building about 20 years ago and
they're still taking rent credits.
Then there is the issue
of the private Chamber of Commerce already receiving hundreds of
thousands of dollars in tax revenues from the Tourist Development
Council. The chamber has a contract to mail information to interested
callers. The negotiated fee is based on overhead, which includes office
expense. In essence, the chamber is double-dipping at the public trough,
collecting tax dollars from one public entity for an expense that it
doesn't remit to its public landlord. What's wrong with this picture?
It's long past time that
the chamber began paying its fair share. It's already collecting the
money from the county to pay its way, but rather than give it to the
city, the chamber is keeping it for itself. A rent in the middle of the
reported range would yield about $240,000 per year. That's $239,880 more
than what's being collected today.
Elliot Baron
Key West
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