Las Animas County tourism funding faces cuts amid lodging tax shortfall

Joe Kozlowicz warned at Trinidad City Hall that lodging-tax collections were falling far below forecasts, a shortfall that could force Trinidad to trim event promotion, tourism grants and downtown activity that business owners actually see on the street.

At the April 7 City Council work session in the council chambers at 135 N. Animas Street, the Lodging Tax Advisory Board updated city officials on a revenue stream that has not kept pace with spending. City Manager Tara Marshall has been laying out multi-quarter collection figures for council and staff, and she said the gap is no longer a minor budgeting issue. “In 2025, we’ve only in the first two quarters collected $265,613.63,” Marshall said. The city had budgeted about $740,000 for the Tourism Fund in FY2025, which means collections were tracking at well under half of the target.

That matters because Trinidad uses lodging-tax revenue to help pay for visitor marketing, festivals and events that drive traffic to downtown businesses and cultural organizations. The city’s 2026 operating budget was approved at about $79.6 million, but the lodging-tax line remains one of the most visible tools for attracting outsiders into Las Animas County. If the fund stays weak, officials face a hard choice: cut back on grants and promotion, shift money from other city priorities, or find a different way to support the same tourism work.

Kozlowicz, who chairs the five-member advisory board, framed the problem bluntly in his update. “As you may be aware, lodging tax collections in 2025 were falling far below their forecasts,” he said. The board’s current membership, as listed on the city’s tourism site, includes Kyle Wagner, Joe Kozlowicz, Eric Shephard, Kris Miller and Lou Ann Peters. Those volunteers advise council on how the money is spent, but the debate over who should control the fund has been building for months.

In November, council voted on an ordinance that would have shifted lodging-tax decisions toward city staff under a pay-as-you-go model, a move that showed how tense the governance fight had become. A later year-end vote preserved the board’s role, but the financial pressure did not disappear. For Trinidad, the question now is whether the drop is a temporary dip in tourism or a warning that the city’s plan for drawing visitors, filling hotel rooms and supporting downtown businesses needs to change fast.