Ark Encounters Latest Attempt to Avoid Paying Citys Safety Fee? Rejected.

[NeoGreen]

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2017/07/19/ark-encounters-latest-attempt-to-avoid-paying-citys-safety-fee-rejected/

Ark Encounter’s Latest Attempt to Avoid Paying City’s “Safety Fee”? Rejected.
July 19, 2017 by Hemant Mehta

There’s a controversy brewing in Williamstown, Kentucky that involves Ark Encounter and the City Council. If the two sides can’t resolve their issues, we may see a lawsuit very soon, but that would be disastrous for the city and unwelcome publicity for the Creationists.

As I mentioned the other day, the battle revolves around a “safety fee” that the city has instituted on all ticket-taking attractions in the city. For Ark Encounter, that mean adding a surcharge of 50 cents per ticket to pay for fire trucks, police cars, etc. — the very things that make the city a safer place for residents and tourists.

Using the estimate of 1.4 million visitors a year, this would amount to approximately $700,000 that Ark Encounter would owe the city annually.

The Creationists at Ark Encounter don’t want to pay that much. They’ve now tried two different tactics to get out of it, and both of them have become news over the past couple of days.

Tactic 1) The Creationists running Ark Encounter say they’re a non-profit religious ministry and therefore exempt from paying the safety fee.

That claim is absurd, in large part because Ark Encounter said for years they were a for-profit tourist attraction in order to receive huge tax breaks, cheap land, and interest-free loans.

But just the other day, we learned that Ken Ham’s buddies sold the land on which the giant boat rests for a whopping $10… to themselves.

… Ark Encounter LLC sold its main parcel of land — the one with the life-size Noah’s Ark — for $10 to their non-profit affiliate, Crosswater Canyon. Although the property is worth $48 million according to the Grant County Property Valuation Administrator, the deed says its value is only $18.5 million.

In other words, Ark Encounter sold its for-profit business to the non-profit entity that oversees it… all so the city (and everyone else for that matter) can’t tax them.

The Grant County News reported today that city officials find that maneuver incredibly shady because the sale went down shortly after the safety fee proposal was passed.

[Laffy Kat]

1. Typical fundie move: playing it both ways to avoid taxes and regulations. nt

[msongs]

2. what favorite mythical person said "Render unto Caesar what is Caesar's..."? nt

[Warpy]

3. I take no pleasure from any of this because I know the area is economically depressed

and this boondoggle will make it far worse until somebody seizes it and auctions it off to a sleaze who turns it into a casino.

I spent part of last night watching videos taken of Heritage USA, Bakker's massive SC paradise/theme park for the pious. It's amazing to see what's become of it in 25 years. Part of it is suburban tract housing, part of it is a convention center, part of it is high rise vacation condos (secular) and most of it has just been left to decay, which it is doing on fast forward.

I have to think both these places suffer from the same malady, that of appealing to too narrow a slice of the public: the conspicuously and aggressively Christian, the people bucking for sainthood, smug expressions pasted on, that the rest of us want nothing to do with. Had he not stuck piety signs all over the place and had he been wise enough to turn one of the lecture halls, er, chapels into a beer garden and dance hall, the place would have been a howling success as a resort.

A sanitized heaven in a world full of sinners is just never going to sell all that well.