The Shelby County Board of Supervisors is exploring options for use of the Hotel/Motel Tax Money. During their regular meeting on Tuesday, Supervisor Roger Schmitz reported that the new Hotel/Motel Tax Fiscal Agent, the Shelby County Auditor, has not received the funding from the Shelby County Chamber of Commerce. Back in January 8th, the Supervisors and Harlan City Council agreed to a resolution to make the Shelby County Auditor the fiscal agent of the Hotel/Motel Tax Money. According to Schmitz, the Chamber was supposed to transfer the money on January 9th. However, during the meeting, Schmitz said that has not happened.

He said “According to their rules, they have to have a Chamber meeting to transfer the money. They had the meeting on the 28th. And what I get out of it, [is that Shelby County Chamber Director Dawn Cundiff] did not have the necessary paper work to do that so they did not transfer the money.” Schmitz asked Shelby County Attorney Marcus Gross if the chamber could write out a check from the tax money. Gross said “We’ve notified their bank that the fiscal agent has changed and that they honor any checks made out by the Chamber at their peril. We don’t know whether there have been any. I guess we will see. I think from an audit standpoint…hey couldn’t write a check out. From a legal standpoint…because they are still the signatory of the account, they probably could. That is why we sent the letter to their bank.”

Gross says that is not the only letter he wrote out as he sent one directly to the Chamber. He said “I also wrote a letter to them to give them a short time to transfer those funds to the Auditor. You’ve previously indicated that you were not going to collect any monies owned to the fund by the chamber: That would be something you could reconsider if you do not receive the current funds in the account. There are other legal options as well that you could consider.”

If the money has not been transferred by Friday, the Shelby County Supervisors will be taking action on the Hotel/Motel Tax money at their next meeting on Tuesday, February 12th.

(Joel McCall/KNOD)