Visitors Leave a Tip

As we explore the components of the county and city budgets, we are learning how these complex budgets work. We are learning what each funding origin can be legally used for, as well as, where this funding comes from (specifically what tax). The visitor's improvement and visitor promotion funds of the county budget piqued our curiosity as to how it works. 

After research, we learned that it is 100% funded by the lodging tax, a tax collected when you stay in a hotel, motel, RV park, etc. The tax is 4%, 1% goes to the state and the other 3% is used to fund the visitor's promotions and improvement funds.  So in all essence, the visitor's center and improvements are paid for by tax dollars from folks who visit our county. 

The visitor's promotion side is what makes up the visitor's center that you see up next to Subway on the hill. This fund pays salaries, benefits, utilities, travel expenses for conferences and workshops, computer expenses, media advertisement, dues and fees for organization memberships, etc.     

We learned that the visitors center is only a piece of what is used to promote businesses and attractions in the county. The other portion, the visitor's improvement, helps to update signings, attractions, historical areas, and many other projects. There are new advertising plans to get folks through our county who are visiting nearby, as well as, new "wayfinding" signs to help navigate visitors to all the exciting businesses and places in our county. This will be a great help to improving traffic flow through the county.

We learned about grants that are available through the center for non-profit entities and government entities. For example, the Octoberfest receives a grant from these funds, as well as, the shooting park received funds for improvements. Again these are all activities that will draw people into our county. We learned of ideas for improving downtown Sidney with some enhancements for lighting and other ideas to draw people to the downtown area. We need to share ideas to help with drawing people to our area, the funds collected from the lodging tax can be a huge benefit to making Cheyenne County a place for visitors to enjoy. We discovered the challenges of navigating the requirements of how the money can be spent and formulating ideas for spending these funds. Remember, it's funds collected from people who visit, this was the greatest learning from this experience.