San Angelo council approves resolution to seek voter OK for venue tax to fund McNeese Convention Center expansion

The San Angelo City Council voted 7-0 to advance a plan to ask voters to approve a 2% venue tax increase on hotel occupancy to finance a proposed expansion of the McNeese Convention Center.

The measure, advanced by a council resolution the body approved unanimously, would add 2 percentage points to the existing hotel-occupancy tax and designate the McNeese project as the specific venue project that tax would fund. Tina Dierski, director of finance, told the council the next steps are to submit the signed resolution to the city's bond attorneys, who will forward it to the state comptroller for review; if the comptroller approves, the city would likely call an election in November. Dierski said the venue tax would not affect property tax as long as the venue-tax receipts and other financing sources cover the debt service on the project.

The expansion concept presented to the council would add roughly 47,300 square feet to the existing 35,765-square-foot facility, producing about 83,000 square feet in total and including a 20,000-square-foot exhibit hall. Al Torres, construction manager for the City of San Angelo, described the exhibit hall as a standard size used in comparable cities: "So what I'm showing here is a 20,000 square foot exhibit hall, which is this area here. 20,000 square feet is the size of the exhibit hall in Abilene and a couple of other places that's pretty standard, so that's what I went with." The preliminary design would also add seven meeting rooms for a total of 15 breakout rooms…