The final numbers

for the 2001-2002 fiscal year show that Peachtree City came up short on

hotel-motel tax collections by approximately $107,000.

City officials

said $832,458 was collected in hotel-motel taxes, far short of the budgeted

amount of $939,922. That represents a decline of over 11 percent from

staff's original projections.

The decline

is being blamed on the downturn in the economy and the slowdown in the

travel industry.

The hotel-motel

tax funds are used to help support the city's Airport Authority, which

owns and operates Falcon Field, and its Development Authority, which operates

the tennis center and amphitheater. The city also gets a separate portion

of the funds to use on other projects: 19.4 percent for the recently ended

fiscal year.

The city's

share will drop to 12.7 percent this year, with the development authority

getting 56.8 percent and the airport authority getting 30.5 percent.

In January,

several City Council members asked both authorities to enact agreements

with the city to save a portion of its hotel-motel tax funds each month

to reimburse the city in case of a shortfall at the end of the fiscal

year.

The City Council

eventually declined to sign the shortfall agreements offered by the authorities,

pending the outcome of the report from a special attorney on the two separate

hotel-motel tax distribution agreements between the city and the authorities.

The special

attorney ruled those agreements, which specified how much hotel-motel

tax money the authorities would get, were invalid. The tax shortfall agreements

were never signed, but the airport authority has put aside money on a

monthly basis to prepare for a shortfall.

Mayor Steve

Brown said he thought the authorities should have offered to cover more

of the hotel-motel tax shortfall in those agreements.

"That's

the hazard you have when you have a body that's appointed with no accountability

after they're appointed to the citizens at large," Brown said. "We

wanted them to account for their portion of the shortfall and they weren't

willing to do that."

Since February,

the Airport Authority has held back $35,000 to help "make up"

for a shortfall in the hotel-motel tax, said Chairwoman Cathy Nelmes.

The airport authority's share will likely tally to about $21,000, she

added.

"We just

changed our plan" to save the funds, Nelmes said. "We started

saving in February after talking about it with the council. We did it

because we wanted to do our share."

The Development

Authority had offered an agreement to the council earlier in the year

that would have set aside approximately $80,000 for the shortfall. But

since the agreement went unsigned by the council, the authority has spent

approximately that amount on attorneys fees, said development authority

executive director Virgil Christian.

The legal fees

have gone towards the equal pay lawsuit filed by former amphitheater director

Kristi Rapson and the dispute with the city council over the hotel-motel

tax intergovernmental agreements, Christian said.

"We are

spending a lot of time with stuff that is not taking the city anywhere,"

Christian said. "Ultimately, it will cost the citizens."