It seems that whenever a city needs extra funding in lieu of increased costs or holes in their budget, the hospitality industry, traditionally, gets pegged with such tax increases or what they like to categorize them as “fees”. Well, Rochester is now under the microscope. The City of Rochester wants to hire more license examiners, fund police programs, two assistant fire marshals and an assistant City Clerk. All on the backs of our liquor license holders.
City officials claim that there has not been significant pushback on their expensive proposal. I question how informed our license holders in Rochester are? What attempts have been made to educate our industry on this? As usual, the city will claim that they gave ample time for rebuttals from the licensed community but will fail to fully engage those who will be paying for this increase.
For those of you in Rochester, PLEASE reach out to your council member and demand an explanation of each dollar that they want you to raise. A detailed look at why just the liquor license holders needs to be magnified. The MLBA has dealt with these fee increases for a long time. Reach out to me for advice and clarity!
Click here for the article from the Post Bulletin from November 4th, 2019.
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