The city of Sun Valley brought in a record-high $2.17 million in local-option taxes in fiscal year 2021, which ended Sept. 30.
The figure represents a strong rebound from the downturn of the COVID-19 pandemic, with LOT receipts up 38% over fiscal year 2020, which ran from Oct. 1, 2019, to Sept. 30, 2020. The collection of approximately $2,174,000 in the last fiscal year was up 6% compared to the total of the pre-pandemic fiscal year 2019, when the city collected approximately $2,058,000.
“That’s an all-time record for us,” Mayor Peter Hendricks announced to the City Council on Thursday, Nov. 4.
The city collects a 4% LOT on room sales (including both hotel rooms and short-term rentals); a 4% LOT on food, beverage and by-the-drink liquor sales; a 4% LOT on recreation fees, product rentals and event tickets; a 2% LOT on building and construction materials; a 2% LOT on lift tickets and ski passes; and a 3% LOT on general retail sales. The percentages include a 1% LOT assessed through a voter-approved initiative to support commercial air service in the Wood River Valley. Those tax funds are set aside and transferred to the Sun Valley Air Service Board, which allocates the money to subsidize and market commercial air service into Friedman Memorial Airport in Hailey.
The LOT numbers in the city’s latest report do not include the so-called “1 Percent for Air” tax.
The city is authorized by the state to collect the taxes through a law that allows certain small resort cities to tax specific sales categories to offset in their budgets the financial impacts of hosting large numbers of visitors. The funds are used to support a variety of city services and projects.
In the retail sales category in fiscal year 2021, businesses in the city collected approximately $1,014,000, up 37% from fiscal year 2020. Retail receipts were down the first five months of fiscal 2021 but were up sharply the last seven months.
LOT receipts in the city from hotel-room bills and short-term lodging were approximately $948,000, up 39% from the previous fiscal year. Those receipts were also down for the first five months and then turned sharply upward in March, after the COVID-19 vaccines were being widely administered and travel increased significantly.
By-the-drink liquor sales showed a similar trend of being down October through February and going up significantly in March and the rest of fiscal 2021. The collection of approximately $129,000 for the fiscal year was up 34% from fiscal 2020.
Collections from sales of building materials were up every month in fiscal 2021, totaling approximately $83,000. That figure is up 64% from fiscal 2020, representing the boom the city has experienced in new residential development during the COVID-19 pandemic. 
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(6) comments
Maybe it's time for Sun Valley to start contributing to subsidized housing then? As a recent MTE article noted, a ridiculously small number of residents of Sun Valley actually work in the Valley. As the housing crisis starts to affect the whole county, will the land of retirees and part-timers be willing to step up along with the other cities?
By what right, principle, or sense of entitlement or convoluted logic would somebody believe or promote the belief that they or others have or a right to subsidized housing in a resort area? That is, housing paid for partially by others when jobs are going begging in other areas where housing is affordable. Please, do not given me the old tired response of who is going to cut the lawn, fix a leaky pipe etc. because somebody will at maybe the same wages or much higher wages because of supply and demand. If not those "retirees and part-timers" will have to go someplace else. By the way, that is not going to happen. In all probability, these are the people along with the people who benefit from cheap labor and employee subsidized housing who will forced to come up with a solution when they realize no government largess is in the cards. By the way, the problem may solve itself as people sell and move away causing prices to decline which is bound to happen anyway for some reason yet unknown.
To your question.....With H2A and the Farm Worker Modernization Act....."Employers would be required to furnish housing to employees and to families when it is a common practice to do so according to regulations set by the Department of Labor. In addition the bill would provide for significant investment into farmworker and rural housing". (Farmers will be reimbursed for the cost of building housing for guest workers). Danilo Zak/ National Immigration Forum.
The machinery to move the mountain of Community Housing will not be found at a local level.
This stuff is funny, all the liberal green demorats in this community raise money by adding taxes to goods purchased, and then give that money to the airlines to fly more planes in and out of here. The airlines are the biggest not-green industry we have . We tax ourselves and pay someone to bring more Covid in the valley.
We (also).down zone and destroy property values to facilitate an airport that degrades our standard of living and quality of life.
Bottom line: When all is said and done, the "green" that they are interested in is money and their own self interest.
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