Dear Voice of San Diego: About your Hotel Self Levy Plan Opinion Article, wait a minute, what?

I was reading this article last night, it's from Voice of San Diego and it could be that it was late and I was half asleep while watching my DVR'd episode of Ugly Betty anyway, but reading it I was mostly like, "wait a minute, what?!"

An excerpt:

Seven months ago, I asked Mayor Jerry Sanders about the proposed tourism marketing district that hoteliers had been pushing for several years. The concept was simple: San Diego’s tourism poobahs wanted to pretend that the city’s large hotels were a sort of virtual neighborhood. Any neighborhood, or "district," in town can set up its own maintenance district. In the district, the stakeholders and residents can vote to levy an extra tax on top of what the city, county and state already take. This is how they get the uniformed litter patrol in Little Italy, for example.
But the big hotels in town don't want to levy any fee on themselves to pay for trash pickup on their premises. They want to generate funds to pay to market their rooms to the world.

The first of those attempts would have set aside millions for the marketing of tourism in San Diego and it would have doled out millions more to interest groups all around town. The second of those attempts would have merely sent the money to the city's general fund, allowing public officials to spend it however they pleased. Hoteliers bitterly opposed the latter version.So they came up with this new plan and they've been working on it ever since.In addition to the 10.5 percent tax visitors pay on their hotel room bill for every night they stay in San Diego, the hoteliers wanted to tack on 2 percent and use the money exclusively for their own marketing efforts.

Hoteliers are funny (or evil geniuses). "Hey San Diego, why don't you go ahead and pay for our marketing and advertising. While you're at it, why don't you also let us use all the city funded programs that we want, could you also, oh I don't know, tax a whole bunch of people and then just give the money to us? Thanks."


I'm sure I don't understand the finer points of this whole tourist industry bringing in money adn what not, but that sounds more than ridiculous to me. You're a business you guys, if you want business then go out and GET YOURSELF SOME BUSINESS.

Or just keep holding your hand out and hope the City Council approves an increase in the room tax for everyone who comes to stay here. Oh, wait a minute...