<p>Hotels dotting Greenwood have dozens of rooms where people stay for a month or more.</p>
<p>Those hotels and other hotels in the county seem to be full, but the county is not seeing more tax revenue collected from people who stay in a hotel in Johnson County. </p>
<p>The collection of the county’s innkeeper’s tax has been stagnant and a local tourism official is pointing to extended stay hotels as part of the reason why more money isn’t being being brought in by the tax, although hotel rooms in the county are full. </p>
<p>The innkeeper’s tax is a tax payed by people who stay at hotels in the county, but an Indiana law says that people who stay at a hotel for more than 30 days do not pay the tax.</p>[sc:text-divider text-divider-title="Story continues below gallery" ]
<p>However, the same officials hope that new hotels opening in Franklin could begin to bring in more money to help fund more tourism efforts as more people stay in Johnson County. </p>
<p>Since the tax has been collected, it has consistently brought in between $540,000 and $570,000 annually to be used for tourism efforts in the county, but despite hotels having the appearance of little vacancies, officials are not seeing more tax dollars, said Kenneth Kosky, tourism director for Festival Country Indiana.</p>
<p>Johnson County was one of the last central Indiana counties to begin collecting an innkeeper’s tax in 2016. The tax is the main income of the county’s tourism commission.</p>
<p>Johnson County’s convention, visitor and tourism board receives all of the money collected from the tax. The board has dubbed itself Festival Country Indiana as a marketing tool. The commission needs the money to ramp up tourism efforts in the county, with the latest effort featuring a tourism center in Franklin, set to open early next year.</p>
<p>Board members drafted a smaller budget for 2019, estimating spending to be about $520,000, which was more than $7,000 less than the budget for 2018, Kosky said. </p>
<p>The smaller budget was drafted in anticipation that the innkeeper’s tax would stay stagnant, and that the growth potential of the tax was limited by high occupancy rates of extended stay hotels that people use when they do not have other long-term housing options, Kosky said.</p>
<p>Social services agencies that offer services to the homeless and police have told Kosky more and more people are staying at a group of hotels in Greenwood for longer than 30 days.</p>
<p>The Johnson County Health Department has conducted raids of the Red Roof Inn, Red Carpet Inn FantaSuites and InTown Suites Extended Stay that revealed dozens of rooms in each of those hotels are rented to people who live there or are staying there long term, said Betsy Swearingen, Johnson County Health Department director.</p>
<p>Greenwood has some hotels that are meant for more longer term stays, but people are staying in other hotels for longer than 30 days too, Greenwood Mayor Mark Myers said.</p>
<p>"We’ve got two actual long-term hotels, and we also have a couple of others — the Red Roof Inn and Red Carpet Inn — and both do have long-term staying individuals," he said.</p>
<p>Greenwood also has long-term plans to build more hotels in the city, including upscale hotels, that could bring in more money for the innkeeper’s tax, Myers said.</p>
<p>A new Fairfield Inn and Suites opened in Franklin over the summer and is already bringing in more tax dollars, and a second hotel is under construction near the Interstate 65 corridor in Franklin.</p>
<p>The innkeeper’s tax collected about 6 percent August, which was the first full month the Fairfield Inn was open. While the sample size is too small to detect a trend, all the new hotels are expected to boost innkeeper’s tax revenue, Kosky said.</p>
<p>The tax also collected thousands more in September 2019, over the same month in 2018, according to county documents.</p>
<p>"We will be watching it very closely," he said.</p>[sc:pullout-title pullout-title="By the numbers" ][sc:pullout-text-begin]<p>Here is a monthly breakdown of innkeeper’s tax collections in the past year:</p>
<p><strong>$46,959.53:</strong> August 2018</p>
<p><strong>$50,593.20:</strong> September 2018</p>
<p><strong>$48,370.24:</strong> October 2018</p>
<p><strong>$49,168.81:</strong> November 2018</p>
<p><strong>$42,448.34:</strong> December 2018</p>
<p><strong>$31,933.90:</strong> January 2019</p>
<p><strong>$30,871.06:</strong> February 2019</p>
<p><strong>$33,463.96:</strong> March 2019</p>
<p><strong>$45,140.39:</strong> April 2019</p>
<p><strong>$42,450.14:</strong> May 2019</p>
<p><strong>$54,993.24:</strong> June 2019</p>
<p><strong>$45,944.27:</strong> July 2019</p>
<p><strong>$47,131.65:</strong> August 2019</p>
<p><strong>$56,536.38:</strong> September 2019</p>[sc:pullout-text-end]
