To the editor:
While many in our community celebrated the reopening of the Cog Railway last summer, I don’t know how many of us are aware of the 50-year agreement that The Broadmoor negotiated before committing to rebuild.
In their first year of operation since reopening, the city returned over $500,000 in tax revenue that the Cog Railway had collected, resulting in an effective tax rate that they actually paid of about 2.5 percent.
I wonder how the small business merchants of our fair village feel about that? How do the hotels and bed and breakfasts who pay 11 percent tax feel about that?
Some may refer to the Cog as an asset to our community and that refunding tax that they collected is a small price to pay for such a valuable asset.
An asset, by definition, pays for itself. The Cog clogs our roads but pays nothing for maintaining them. During the time the Cog was closed for renovations the gift shop tax revenue increased by 13 percent in 2018 and by a further 16 percent in 2019, showing that the Cog doesn’t credibly increase the revenues of our small businesses, yet they are not paying their fair share in taxes.
I would hope that our City Council corrects this unfair rebate of taxes collected, but at the very least the citizenry deserves to know how things stand.
Steve Bremner