It might be a leap to link resort fees with your natural gas bill, but please stick with me while I attempt to make the connection.
A resort fee is a relatively recent phenomenon in certain high demand tourist destinations, places like Hawaii and Las Vegas, that adds another cost to your hotel stay. It’s a charge, over and above the advertised room rate, that began popping up in the early 2000s and, like any fee is bound to do, it’s insidiously expanded its reach since that time.
For most Vegas hotels, the resort fee now runs $40 a day, give or take, which adds a chunk of change to any stay, particularly after factoring in the exchange rate for Canadian guests.
So, what do you get for your resort fee? Unfortunately, it’s not a heck of a lot. The fee purports to cover such things as pool and fitness centre access and in-room internet. In other words, pretty much the same amenities that you’d expect to enjoy at a hotel that doesn’t charge a resort fee.
It's simply a way to extract more money out of guests without raising the room rate, which allows hotels to appear less expensive than they actually are. Some hotelier came up with the idea two decades ago and the industry, at least in certain locations, has latched onto it in a back-door attempt to improve the bottom line.
This is where I make the leap to your natural gas bill, specifically the franchise fee that’s now part of it. Local governments have the ability to levy this fee even though it seems to have nothing to do with the provision of natural gas to customers, a sort of civic sleight of hand to raise what are essentially more tax dollars.
Much like two charges (resort fee and room rate) get you one thing (hotel room), homeowners are paying two charges (property tax bill and franchise fee) in order to receive one product (municipal services). I realize towns, including Okotoks, are well within their right to levy a franchise fee on natural gas bills, but doing so has an underhanded feel to it.
Why not just be transparent with ratepayers and collect what you need to fund civic services through property tax bills? Well, I suspect that’s not done because just as a hotel room seems more attractive at $190 a night compared to $230, Town officials look like they’re doing a much better job managing the public purse if property taxes only rise two per cent, not four per cent.
I also suspect that a homeowner’s anger upon receiving a higher gas bill will be directed at the gas company, not town hall, allowing local government to collect more tax dollars without having to endure the wrath of ratepayers.
I can certainly see why municipal politicians have glommed onto the idea of a franchise fee and why Okotoks council is considering raising it to the maximum allowable in order to add another $1 million to Town coffers, but like the dreaded resort fee, I can’t help but feel I’m being duped.
