City council earmarks room tax money for park music

The city of Medford is investing in the arts.

At Tuesday’s city council meeting, members voted to approve setting aside 2% of the overall hotel/motel room tax funds collected to go toward paying for performers in the Tombstone Pizza Bandshell in the Medford City Park.

The Medford Kiwanis Club applied for and received a grant from the Hotel/Motel fund to help cover band expenses for the 2024 Kiwanis Summer Concert Series. The change would eliminate the need for the group running the concert series to have to apply and compete with other applicants for the funds.

Alderman Mike Bub, who serves on the Room Tax commission noted that due to a growing number of events in the community, they are unable to fully fund all the requests they receive.

The city, like many other communities, charges a special 4% sales tax on motel room rentals. This money is collected quarterly and historically 85% went to grants for groups putting on events and 15% was retained by the city for other needs.

Initially, the proposal was to set aside 1% of the room tax revenues for the series with it coming out of the portion of the funds designated for grants for events.

Council member Clem Johnson raised concern that this would be too small an amount. “It would be less than $500 the way it looks to me, which isn’t much,” Johnson said.

He proposed raising the amount to 2% of the overall amount collected with the additional 1% to come from the portion of the room tax the city retains.

Bub agreed noting that the city has about $7 million in reserves. “If we give away $1,000 the city is not going to go bankrupt,” he said.

Council members agreed and approved designating 2% of the room tax revenues to go toward music in the park. It was noted that the money is specifically not to go toward the Parkfest celebration which is run by the Medford Area Chamber of Commerce and which annually receives room tax fund grants.

In other business, council members:

★ Approved the noise permits for the Taylor County Fair which will be held on July 24-28. The permits are for events on Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights allowing events to go until 1 a.m. in the morning. The permits needed council approval because it goes beyond normal quiet hours.

★ Received the annual audit report from Stuart Randall - CliftonLarsonAllen, the city’s auditors. Overall, the city received a clean audit, the findings were consistent with other cities the size of Medford. The only unusual issue that was found was a levy limit violation. Due to an error in filling out a state form last December, the city levied more than what was allowed, in response the state reduced the 2024 shared revenue to the city by the same amount. Randall also reminded the city of additional audit requirements for the community development block grant received for the wastewater treatment plant project.

★ Approved rescinding the requirement to have photography licenses in the city. It has been a number of years since the city issued any photography licenses and with no enforcement the decision was made to remove it from the city books.

★ Approved appointing aldermen Randy Haynes and Mike Bub as alternates to represent the city of Medford on the Medford Area Fire Commission board. The city has six representatives on the board and the commission’s bylaws allow municipalities to name alternates if the designated members are not able to attend a meeting. Meetings are typically held quarterly. Mayor Mike Wellner was previously named as an alternate.