Cookeville Sees Some $632K In Revenue For First Full Year Of Hotel-Motel Tax

Cookeville saw revenues of about $632,000 for its first full year of hotel-motel tax.

City Manager James Mills said that the number is solid for a year in the pandemic. He said that the hotel-motel tax serves as a good revenue generator for both the city and county.

“Here, we pushed the revenue in the Quality of Life fund with the intention of using it specifically for parks and recreation improvements which would generate tourism,” Mills said. “So that’s one of the requirements to enact a hotel-motel tax, is that the revenues for tourism and economic development.”

Mills said that the city first began collecting hotel-motel tax in September of 2019. He said that as of December 2021, they’ve generated a little over $1.5 million.

Mills said that the revenue has allowed the city to catch up on much-needed projects. He said that they’ve spent some $822,000 on projects like Cane Creek Park playground upgrades, West End Park improvements, and master plan updates.

“So we’ve spent about $822,000 of it which would leave us with about $717,000” “And we’ve got all of that and more earmarked to several projects. One of those is restoring the shoreline at Cane Creek Park, that’s estimated to cost at least $250,000. There’s also in there to do the design for an aquatics and/or ice facility, we’ve got $250,000 in that for the engineering and design for that (…) Most of this money is earmarked, and the council thought that was the best use of this money. Let us try to catch up on a lot of different needs in our Parks and Recreation facilities before we start utilizing this money for new projects.”