Sales-tax revenue from the Dallas-Fort Worth airport is shared among five towns and two counties.
San Francisco International Airport is located in San Mateo County, which shares the wealth with the city and county of San Francisco.
At least, those were the cases in 2004 -- according to a report prepared by the Durham Convention and Visitors Bureau and shared with the City Council and County Board of Commissioners more than five years ago.
It's the same information some commissioners asked the county staff to dig up at their last meeting, when the subject of getting a share of the sales-tax revenue from Raleigh-Durham International came up.
Maybe they forgot.
Nothing came of it back then, but now the issue is back at least on Durham County's part of the table.
According to a March 8, 2004 memo from the DCVB president Reyn Bowman to County Manager Mike Ruffin and then-City Manager Marcia Conner, a consultant had wondered why Durham didn't get any of the general sales tax generated at RDU. Aside from allocations for airport operation and TTA, the income goes to Wake County, where the airport is located -- although it is jointly owned by Wake and Durham counties and the cities of Durham and Raleigh.
County commissioner Joe Bowser (who, along with commissioners Becky Heron and Ellen Reckhow, raised the issue after an airport authority report earlier this month) was on the DCVB board at the time and brought the matter to the commissioners' attention and to that of the Durham delegation to the state legislature.
The county asked DCVB to investigate, and, enquiring of authorities at similarly shared airports, got the information above.
The memo further states that "Durham draws the highest market share [of the four RDU owners] of visitor-related passengers who generate the dedicated and undedicated tax revenue generated at the co-owned Airport facility."
Thus armed, Bowman arranged for Durham, Raleigh and Wake officials to talk tax business, "but a meeting to do due diligence was cut short" due to some misunderstanding between Bowman and the Durham managers -- according to a June 8, 2004 letter from DCVB's board officers to members of the Durham City Council and county board.
"It is problematic that the initial meeting's mission may have been misunderstood," the letter concluded. "But we strongly encourage you to resume pursuit of this objective."
Better late than never.
