Stay a spell: Occupancy tax collections from hotel and motels in the city-parish were 24.2% better in July, compared to the same month a year ago, Visit Baton Rouge’s board of directors reported at its monthly meeting today. July collections totaled $357,382, the board says. Hotel revenues in the city-parish were up 11.5% in July, and are up 20.3% year-to-date through July. In other business, the board discussed and approved a resolution to allow Visit Baton Rouge President and CEO Paul Arrigo to seek counsel from the Louisiana attorney general for a legal opinion concerning the “rights, powers, duties and/or obligations under state law related to Visit Baton Rouge’s operation and management.”
On deck: Baton Rouge Community College will host its first-ever 2012 Bayou Challenge on Saturday, Oct. 6, with the inaugural event to be held at LSU’s Alex Box Stadium, BRCC announced today. BRCC will face a pair of in-state rivals, Delgado Community College and LSU-Eunice, as well as State College of Florida. “Since I was a kid, I always wanted to play at Alex Box Stadium,” says Robert “Bo” Parker, a BRCC sophomore outfielder from Minden. Tickets to the Bayou Challenge, which will be available at the gate, are $10 for adults, $5 for children 12 and up, and free for all others—including college students with ID.
Where the rubber meets the road: New Orleans’ taxi fleet is being forced to modernize, over the objections of numerous cab drivers. Starting Monday, the city’s roughly 1,600 cabs will have to be equipped with air conditioning, surveillance cameras, credit card machines and global positioning devices. The vehicles may not be older than 11 years, and that age limit will be reduced to seven years in 2014. Cabs without these upgrades will fail their next biannual inspection. The changes have come despite protests and court challenges by many taxi operators.
