Pahrump room tax collections on the rise

Pahrump’s room tax collections are on the rise, and officials expect the trend to continue for the next few years.

The Pahrump Tourism Advisory Committee presented a tourism budget for fiscal year 2018 that starts in July 2017 that showed the room tax collection numbers from July 2016 through January 2017 were at $213,792, and the remaining five months of this fiscal year through June 2017 showed $219,000, according to the documents.

“Just to put that in perspective, the first seven months of fiscal (year) 2017, was up almost 61 percent over the same period the year before,” said James Horton, committee member.

For the remaining five months of the 2017 fiscal year, the county will see a 45-percent projected increase in room taxes over the same five months last year.

Commissioner John Koenig said he expects more room tax revenue in town.

“Looking up from my future eyes, I see it going up in the next years, especially, once we get more rooms down by the racetrack,” Koenig said.

“Bottom line is, that puts cash in at about $440,000, total expenses of $372,000. If all goes as planned, that would actually increase the fund balance about $70,000 at the end of fiscal year 2018,” Horton said.

Inside the numbers

In past years, the tourism portion of the room tax fund has borne the cost of salaries and benefits for town of Pahrump staff.

Chris Erwin, member of the Pahrump Tourism Advisory Committee, said in the last couple of years, the committee has been seeing 40 to 60 percent increases in room taxes.

“We are kind of looking at it as our sales force. … I would be cautious of cutting the budget or making changes to it for fear that that room tax starts to go down,” Erwin said.

The overall budget is down by $40,000 but Horton said it’s based on the premise that the committee can allocate salaries and benefits over the various funds.

“The town and the tourism has done a really good job investing into the infrastructure, in this case, the website, the social media, the different avenues that have been going on for five years now. We are really starting to reap the benefits of that,” Erwin said.

A closer look

Arlette Ledbetter, town of Pahrump tourism director, said that 1 percent of room tax that used to pay for economic development is currently not being used.

“It used to pay a staff member for economic development. It hasn’t for several years,” Ledbetter said.

“And I think that fund could be put to very good use by marketing the town of Pahrump combined with the tourism fund,” she said.

Nye County commissioners last week postponed approving a committee’s proposed budget for $372,032 for 2018 fiscal year at the request of Nye County Manager Pam Webster.

”What I’d like to do is delay a vote to approve this budget until we incorporate it into the board budget process for next year and do the entire budget at the same time when we have projections for ending fund balance,” Webster said.

Contact reporter Daria Sokolova at dsokolova@pvtimes.com. On Twitter: @dariasokolova77