Seneca Chamber gets 90 percent of room tax for tourism promotion

A strongly worded appeal by business owner Tom Murray at Tuesday’s Seneca County Board of Supervisors meeting was followed by a vote to provide promised funding for tourism promotion.

In October, the board tabled a motion to provide the Seneca County Chamber of Commerce, which functions as the county’s tourism promotion agency, with 90 percent of the room occupancy tax revenue in 2020 to use for tourism promotion; the other 10 percent would be set aside for the board to allocate to tourism-related applications it deemed worthy of support.

The percentages were agreed upon earlier, but some board members had questions. The actual monetary amount is $434,824.30.

Murray, owner of Muranda Cheese Co. in Fayette, said he was “troubled” by the tabling of the tourism allocation to the Chamber.