Well put, Arndt & George!

I'm just outside of Chicago, and over the last many years the city has increased the hotel/motel tax rate with the attitude that the additional revenue would mean visitors pay for improvements. There have been great improvements in the parts of town that most visitors see and many locals enjoy - Grant Park, Michigan Ave, etc.

Over the 18 years I've been going to the BVI the only apparent improvement I've seen as a result of the additional fees the government has tacked on is the EIS terminal. I hope the belongers have seen improvements, but I'm skeptical. What I have seen is a series of boondoggles and dead ends: Prospect Reef, traffic lights on the RT roundabout, the aborted Smugglers Cove project, the aborted Beef Island golf course, the aborted national airline, the endless "studies" of the EIS expansion. In the meantime, the most obvious & cheapest improvement that would benefit belongers & visitors alike - the rationalization of the ferry system, on which our own Glenn Ashmore wrote a brilliant analysis gratis seven years ago - has received no attention.

The BVI did the smart thing in locking down the territory, and it has been very effective, so far. This boat agent requirement in the middle of a pandemic, assuming it is executed, is the equivalent of hostage-taking. If I still owned a boat down there, I would be looking for a new home for her post-pandemic.