Kings Island is asking its visitors to fight a tax that would boost the cost of a getaway to Warren County.
"Tell Them No!" the sign in the Kings Island parking lot reads, inviting all who pass by to attend Monday night's Mason city council meeting.
There is a similar message on the Kings Island website.
Hundreds are expected to show up at the meeting where the proposed admission and parking tax will be up for a vote.
Citizens will each get about two minutes each to speak.
Councilman Tony Bradburn, who proposed the 3% tax on admission to all Mason attractions and 5% on parking, tells 9News he'll give an explanation of his proposal at the meeting.
The tax would add about $1.50 to a Kings Island ticket. It would add 50-cents to parking.
The people who run Kings Island aren't worried about what it means to one ticket, they say they're worried about how it will add up for a whole family and large groups.
Bradburn says the money would go to road improvements.
He says the target area would be the ramps at I-71 and Western Row Road just outside Kings Island.
The general manager of Kings Island, Greg Sheid, says the tax would turn people away.
"Any additional fee that they would have to pay to come here could be the difference of them [visitors] coming and not coming, so it will have an impact not only on our attendance, but on the number of how many people go to the local hotels, how many people shop at the stores and how many people go to restaurants in the surrounding areas," Sheid said.
Sheid says there is an admission tax at two of Cedar Fair's 10 parks.
He says when it was imposed at Ceder Point in Sandusky, Ohio, there was a drastic drop in attendance.
Bradburn says he doesn't believe that the tax would lead to a drop in attendance at Kings Island.
"I really don't believe that at all," he says.
Sheid says in 1997 Mason leaders promised Kings Island the city would not implement an admission tax.
"When Kings Island annexed into the city of Mason [from Deerfield Township] it should be known that Mason said to Kings Island, ‘Come to our city, you don't ever have to fear an admissions tax,’" says Sheid.
Bradburn says, "If someone promised them then, they were working outside the bounds of their elected office."
"We have had communication with our law director that council cannot bind future councils by saying there would not be a tax," says Bradburn.
For the people who say the economy is too bad to ask people to pay more, Bradburn says there's never a good time to add a tax.
The meeting will begin at 7 p.m. Monday at the Mason City Council Chambers.
