VIDEO: 2% Tourism Tax Brings In City $45,000

WINONA, Miss. (WCBI)- If you stop to eat in Winona, you are helping the town make some noticeable improvements.

There’s a 2% tourism tax added to foods served in restaurants.

In just 5 months, the city has been able to make major improvements to the public park, which in turn has attracted more sports tournaments.

Winona Mayor Jerry Flowers says that when they first implemented the tourism tax, he hoped it would be successful. But he never imagined it’d have this big of an impact.

“We’ve done a lot of gravel work on the parking lots and the roads out there and laid a bunch of new sod in places that it was washing out and has helped a lot and ordered a lot of nice new garbage cans, and picnic tables, and benches and that type of stuff and we’re looking into some bleacher canopies now to put over the bleachers for shade and head protection as well,” says Parks and Recreations Director Mike Narmour.

And on and on the list goes.

These improvements are all made possible thanks to the 2 percent tourism tax on prepared foods implemented October.

Flowers and Narmour have been working together to improve the parks so that more teams play tournaments here.

Since October the mayor says the city’s received a little over $45,000- that’s around $14,000 each month.

And they expect that amount to grow

“It really helps the local economy immensely, I mean even people here at the Pizza Inn here in downtown and the tracks, they really love when we have teams here because Mike had over fifty teams two weekends ago and that’s a lot of people to come in here, that’s well over a thousand people here and that’s huge,” says Flowers.

They say people are already noticing the progress.

“We’ve had two tournaments over the past two weekends and people that’s played there over the last several years have really bragged about the difference it’s made already and we will continue to make improvements out there,” says Narmour.

Currently, they are applying for Dizzy Dean grant to help even more.

“A grant up to 5 thousand dollars to help with park improvements for the towns that play and support Dizzy dean and they were gracious enough to grant it to us last year and I’m gonna keep my fingers crossed we’re lucky enough to get it again this year,” says Narmour.

Narmour says the arson fire that took place almost two weeks ago at the park has set them back a bit.

The fire occurred on February 11th and burned down the parks pavilion and public restrooms.

Narmour says that those costs weren’t obviously in the budget and now funds, that were planned for other projects, will have to go towards repair.

No arrests have been made yet.

The Police Chief asks that anyone with any information come forward.