This effort could save Nampa taxpayers up to a million dollars. How would you vote?

Some Nampa voters could have a new question on their November election ballots this year: Should they create the city’s first auditorium district?

The creation of a Nampa Auditorium District would add a 5% tax on hotel rooms to help two event centers: the Ford Idaho Center and Nampa Civic Center.

Jeff Agenbroad, former president of the Snake River Stampede, the annual rodeo in Nampa, is helping to spearhead the effort. He said the district would save Nampa residents taxpayer dollars that would normally go to fund upkeep and repairs at the event centers.

Agenbroad estimates the district would generate $1.2 million per year for the centers. The centers’ remaining needs would still cost property taxpayers.

“That isn’t going to cover the entire improvement costs at both those facilities on an annual basis, but it does take that much of the tax burden off of just the Nampa property taxpayer and puts it on people that are benefiting from it who are outside the community,” Agenbroad said by phone.

Proponents of the Nampa Auditorium District estimated that the Ford Idaho Center hosts 155 events and 574,127 attendees per year, and the Nampa Civic Center hosts 415 events and 92,274 attendees.

Agenbroad called the auditorium tax a “user fee.” He said the Nampa Civic Center and Ford Idaho Center are aging. Both were built in the 1990s. The tax would help the two buildings make improvements to accommodate the growth that Nampa has seen over the years.

“Because many of the people who stay in the hotels in Nampa are attending a function at either the Civic Center or the Ford Idaho Center, this is a way to share some of that burden to maintain the quality of the venues,” he said.

Idaho has three auditorium districts. The oldest is Boise’s, which was created in 1959. The Pocatello-Chubbuck district was created in 1998 and the Idaho Falls district in 2021.

Idaho law requires that districts be initiated by a petition to a court. The petition must be signed by 10% of the registered voters who live within the boundaries of the proposed district.

A group of proponents of the auditorium district, calling themselves the Nampa Tourism Development Council, submitted a petition for judicial review to state District Court on Feb. 24. Such petitions are normally filed to appeal a decision by a local governing body or agency, but they’re also the method prescribed by state law to review petitions for proposed auditorium districts.

On Tuesday, District Judge Matthew J. Roker ruled that the council had not obtained the necessary number of signatures and denied the group’s request to continue the hearing until the petition received the signatures, Agenbroad said.

Agenbroad said proponents fell just 142 signatures short of the needed 2,512 signatures to get the auditorium district question placed on the May 21 ballots. But now they have plenty of time to collect the signatures before November, he said. He hopes to go before the judge through the same process in late spring with the additional signatures.

The district would require a simple majority to pass. It would be put only to voters who live within the auditorium district, which was determined by the group seeing the petition.

The Idaho Statesman called and emailed the Idaho Lodging and Restaurant Association seeking comment on the auditorium proposal, but the messages were not returned.

In 2020, the same Nampa Tourism Development Council tried to get an auditorium district placed on the ballot, but it could not gather enough signatures, the Idaho Press reported at the time.

Residents within the auditorium district can sign the petition at the Nampa Chamber of Commerce or by contacting the auditorium district at info@nampaauditoriumdistrict.com.

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