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Nola Sizemore

Staff Writer

A discussion was held during the regular monthly meeting of the Evarts Tourist and Convention Commission on Monday about a business, The Corner Cafe, located in the city, which is allegedly refusing to provide gross sales receipts to the city as required by law.

“Our tourism tax ordinance states we do have the right to audit them,” said Evarts City Clerk Kristi Lamb. “However, we sent them a letter for the past six months asking for their gross sales receipts to be included with their statement and to date we have not had a response to our request. The letter was sent by our accountant David Smith.”

Commission member Henry Shackleford made a motion and Tony Aslinger seconded that motion to ask their attorney, Otis Doan, to mail a letter to The Corner Cafe once again asking them to provide their gross sales receipts along with a statement.

The Corner Cafe co-owner Danny Felosi was contacted on Tuesday and he said the letters he received were requesting the restaurant’s Kentucky sales tax form.

“I don’t know why they’d want that,” said Felosi. “I don’t know if the state would even want me to release that because that’s business between me and the state. Besides, I don’t like the restaurant tax. It’s taxing the local people who are here eating at my restaurant more than tourists.”

Lamb said she was approached by District 1 Magistrate Jonathan Pope about doing a visitor’s guide for the Cumberland, Evarts and Harlan area. She said there is a proposal on the table from the Cumberland and Harlan tourist commissions about Evarts tourism participating in the purchase of brochures outlining tourist attractions in Harlan County.

“I think the visitor’s guide would be better than the brochures,” said Lamb. “Our motion was to participate in the costs of printing a brochure if the (Harlan County Outdoor Recreation) Park Board also went in on the brochure. If Jonathan can get with Harlan and Cumberland tourism before they do this brochure, I think it will work out better. If not, I guess we’ll be doing the brochures. I’ll get with Jonathan to see where he is on this.”

In other commission action items approved included:

* Purchase one-half page advertisement from the Hazard Herald for their Eastern Kentucky Visitor’s Guide at a cost of $354.73. The guide will be distributed in Perry, Floyd, Knott, Johnson, Pike, Letcher, Harlan and Leslie counties;

* Purchase of soft drinks for the tourist commission to sell during their Labor Day Festival on Sept. 1. They noted they will be the only vendor selling soft drinks during the festival;

* Noted new sign tourism purchased is now in place on U.S. 119 at Baxter.

Reach Nola Sizemore at 606-573-4510 or at nsizemore@heartlandpublications.com