Wednesday, October 21, 2009

Shilling on Metro's dollar

One of the Tennessean blogs reports that Metro Codes Administrators has taken up some of the PR slack for the convention center proponents by shilling for the Convention and Visitors Bureau in their latest newsletter:
Nashville has both the need and the demand for a new convention center.

If Nashville wants to take advantage of an attractive downtown to draw visitors who bring tax revenue to our city. Nashville operates on two main sources of tax revenues property taxes and sales taxes. By growing the convention business, Nashville can expand the sales tax revenue from visitors and thus depend less on property taxes from citizens.

According to the Convention and Visitors Bureau, Nashville must turn away business. With the 115th largest convention center in the country, Nashville can compete for only about one-fourth of the convention market. The CVB believes that with unique Music City U.S.A. brand, Nashville should be competing for as much as three-fourths of the convention market.
Shouldn't Metro Codes be spending time and money citing codes violators rather than promoting the most expensive capital project in the history of Nashville? Or has the Mayor ordered all hands on deck to push the convention center through?

1 comment:

  1. If I remember it right, Codes took a pretty good hit in the last round of budget cuts. They lost (or had to leave unfilled) several positions, including a couple of inspectors. Maybe they're just kowtowing now, in hopes of better treatment next time. I think we'll see other departments join in the CC cheerleading before this is over with.

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