WAUSAU, WI (WSAU) — It was a tense meeting at Wausau’s City Hall Thursday evening regarding room tax collection.
A joint meeting of the Wausau Finance Committee and the Room Tax Committee was held Thursday evening to discuss matters relating to room tax revenues. The meeting was scheduled regarding the city’s contract with the Wausau Convention and Visitors Bureau after the agency was accused of improperly collecting room tax money from the online travel site Expedia.
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At the meeting, the two committees heard from CVB Executive Director Richard Barrett about the issue. Barrett said that by speaking with Expedia about the delinquent room tax money, he was doing what had been outlined in the contract. “‘They [Wausau and CVB] shall work together towards the collection of any delinquent room tax owed to the city.
“And the parties shall cooperate with the city to assist in the collection of any delinquent or deficient amounts owed by any operator required to collect and remit room tax proceeds under the city ordinance’. That is what I followed. We are contracted to do it with you and that’s what we’ve done.”
Finance Committee Chair Lisa Rasmussen countered Barrett saying there was no collaboration or assistance from CVB in collecting the room tax money. “There was no call by you to say, ‘Hey Maryanne, guess what? You might have some room tax coming your way that you’ve not collected.’
“There was no such call. There was no collaboration. There was no outreach to the city to say, ‘City, heads up you may have money coming.’ We would have collected it ourselves. Or there was no outreach to say, ‘City would you like me to do this for you’.”
Barrett explained that when he spoke with Expedia, he gave the company contacts to local municipalities. In giving those contacts to Expedia Barrett said he didn’t think that the company would use CVB for collecting the room tax money.
“He in turn sent us the check. I thought those checks were going to be written to the city, not to me. I shouldn’t say to me but to the Convention and Visitors Bureau. We took care of it and every penny was hand delivered by me with an explanation of what happened. We assisted in getting those dollars to you and you recieved every single penny.”
Barrett and Rasmussen went back and forth a little bit longer regarding the investigation into the incident done by the Marathon County Sheriff’s Department before the committees went into closed session. In closed session, the two committees discussed with legal counsel about the contract between the city and the Convention and Visitors Bureau.
No action was taken by the committees on the contract Thursday evening. The finance committee adjourned in closed session and didn’t reconvene into open session. More discussion on the contract could be coming at their next meeting on July 28th.
The full video of the meeting can be found on the Wausau City Council YouTube page.
