The day before Bellevue’s March city council meeting, flyers appeared along Fairfield Avenue in the main business district. The flyers warned the city was considering a tax on restaurants and bars and urged residents to contact the mayor and council members to ask them not to support a “tourism” tax.
At the start of the council meeting, Mayor Charlie Cleves sharply denied the city was considering the tax.
“First I want to talk about what’s going on around town with these restaurant taxes,” he said. “We are not even considering doing the restaurant tax. So, for all of those who came here to complain about the restaurant tax, it’s not happening. It’s just something someone started, made up posters, put them all over the Avenue, and there is no truth to it at all.”
Despite the mayor’s strong response, the issue of a restaurant tax has been a topic of discussion in the city, most recently at Bellevue’s visioning session for the coming year. An October 2023 LINKnky report noted the idea of a restaurant tax was brought to council as a possibility to raise funds to help rehabilitate the historic Marianne Theater building, which the city owns.
City Administrator Frank Warnock said he had brought up the idea at the visioning session and earlier.
“In relation to the restaurant tax, this was my idea,” Warnock said. “I went to Elizabethtown, Kentucky, where they did that. There they have a major park and they are rehabilitating a theater in Elizabethtown with the use of the restaurant tax. They have major ballfields and they have hotels that surround the city, and it’s all as a result of the restaurant tax. I saw a lot of good in it.”
Warnock directly addressed the audience at the meeting, many of whom were local business owners who’d seen the flyers and came out of concern.
“The fact that you oppose it. I respect that. I see your perspective. I understand it.I did bring it up at the visioning session, and it was very briefly discussed, but that’s it. It’s all we’ve done since then,” he said.
In 2023, state lawmakers amended legislation to allow cities to levy an additional tax of up to 3% on restaurants and bars to fund tourism efforts specifically. About 20% of Kentucky cities have done so, according to the Kentucky League of Cities.
Other council members said they had considered the idea, saying there are few avenues of potential revenue available to cities. They noted payroll taxes, limited property taxes, and fees are not bringing in enough revenue, especially in light of the rising costs of maintaining and running a city.
“The state doesn’t give us a lot of options,” Council member Sean Fisher said. “I don’t agree with that. We should talk to our state reps to get them to give cities the flexibility we need to improve our parks, improve our infrastructure, rehabilitate the Marianne. These things are not able to be done in a budget with escalating personnel, police and fire service costs. I think it’s an interesting idea. I think we should look for these opportunities wherever we can so we can provide additional services here.”