If innkeeper’s tax collections are any indication, at least a part of the economic recovery in Jackson County began in the middle of 2010.
“We had a two-year period where revenues were down,” said Tina Stark, executive director of the Jackson County Visitors Center.
That downturn began in November 2007 when monthly collections from the 5 percent tax peaked at $34,938.30.
The tax was first imposed a couple of years before the visitors center in Seymour, which employs one part-time and three full-time people, opened in 1999. The purpose of the center is to attract visitors from other parts of the state as well as other states to the county through marketing.
Total collections in 2007 were $322,933.95.
“It was our best year ever at that time,” Stark said.
