The city’s pursuit of the $156 million Uptown art complex is getting odd. City officials loudly proclaimed the other night that they are cutting the proposed hike in the county’s car-rental tax from 4 to 3 per cent, shaving $11 million from that particular revenue hike. That would, we were told, bring some car rental companies on board in support of the plan.
Uh, no.
News14 Carolina reports:
“They’ve never contacted us; we don’t know anything about anyone else on board either,” said Matthew Keefe of Triangle Rent-A-Car.
They said they don’t support the tax at 4 percent or 3 percent.
“Three percent can offset it just enough that some of these people may not be able to afford a rental vehicle,” Keefe said. “It just doesn’t seem fair to me that these people should carry this burden.”
Rental car company owners fear their customers will not be able to afford a vehicle with the tax.
Those people, he said, are all locals, not tourists. …“I haven’t heard from anybody at all that’s pushing this through or wanting this to happen,” Keefe said.
Of course not, because it makes no sense. The car rental companies in Charlotte understand that people who do visit Charlotte as tourists bring their own car. Charlotte is a regional “destination location,” not the national or even global hotspot that the deluded Uptowners insist that it is or soon will be. Many car renters in Charlotte are local folks, not international jet-setters.
And the promise of seats on the tourism board to car rental companies in exchange for their support of a business-losing tax hike is downright bizarre, offensive even.
The Uptown crowd is insisting in the face of all available evidence, that the car rental companies do not understand their own business. What part of NO don’t they understand?
