The best way I can describe it is, all of us, at one point or another, have traveled somewhere. Whether it is to Padre Island, or Houston, or San Antonio, or Dallas, or New York, Chicago, or LA.
And everything you go there, on your hotel bill, whether it is for one night or ten nights, there will be what we call a visitor or a venue tax. And those visitor and venue taxes are funds that the local community will charge its visiting individuals and utilize that money for local quality of life or economic development projects.
It makes all the sense in the world to have a visitor who is coming in, spending their money, and then leaving and then you get to utilize those funds for the people that make up your community. That is exactly what we have done with the Isla Blanca Amphitheater, what we have done with the South Texas Ecotourism, because we are planning ahead. We want to have tourist destinations and attractions and The Arena as part of the master-planned development, Madeira, will be the heart and soul of the future.
And we need to plan. Just because some of us may be up in years, saying, well, I am not going to benefit from that. No, no, no. We have to think about our kids. We have to think about our grandkids. We have to think about our great grandkids. Because the Valley has been found out. It is a beautiful place. We have always known it but everybody in the rest of the country, the rest of the world, now have figured that out and they are coming here.
We should be enjoying the same exact quality of life amenities that everybody else has in this country.
Editor’s Note: The above commentary was given by Cameron County Judge Eddie Treviño, Jr., in a video produced for social media to promote the Cameron County Arena. Cameron County voters will get to decide on the issue next month.
Editor’s Note: Click here to read the case FOR the arena. We will bring the case AGAINST the arena in the coming days.
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