Visitors to Manteno’s short-term rentals, commonly known as Airbnb or VRBO, won’t have to pay the 5% hotel tax after the Village Board on Monday adopted an amended ordinance without the surcharge.

Manteno resident Tiffany Parpart, who owns and operates three Airbnbs, spoke to the board on more than one occasion that she was not in favor of collecting the tax, along with other issues with the ordinance. After the meeting, she was asked if it’s fair that she doesn’t have to collect the tax, while the village’s two hotels do.

“I absolutely think it is fair because I’m not a big corporation, and I don’t get property tax rebates,” she said. “Most corporations get tax incentives to go into towns. I don’t get any of that.”

The visitors to the Airbnbs would pay the tax, and not the owner of the establishment.

As part of an intergovernmental agreement reached in 2024 among Manteno, Bourbonnais, Kankakee and Kankakee County, each municipality pays $60,000 plus $5,000 for each hotel to Visit Kankakee County. Manteno’s part of the agreement is $70,000, as the village has two hotels.

The village would keep the 5% tax collected on the short-term rentals, so Manteno is walking away from at least $20,000 annually.

Nicole Gavin, executive director of Visit Kankakee County, previously said data shows Manteno has 15 short-term rentals. A conservative estimate is that those could generate $33,480 per month in stays, and the 5% hotel tax of that would be $1,674 per month or $20,088 annually.

Gavin said via email on Tuesday that she welcomes Manteno’s new short-term rental ordinance as a positive step that strengthens safety and consistency for visitors, residents and property owners.

“Our mission is to promote the entire Kankakee County region to drive visitation and strengthen economic impact,” she said. “We fully support Mayor [Annette] LaMore’s observation that these rentals bring many visitors, including international visitors, who spend money at local restaurants and businesses. While we are not a taxing body, we want to clarify that any future Hotel Operator’s Occupation Tax would go directly to the municipality.”

Previously, the 5% hotel tax from the approximate 1,100 hotel rooms in Kankakee went to Visit Kankakee County, formerly known as Kankakee County Convention and Visitors Bureau. The agreement generated about $950,00 annually. The village of Bradley pulled out of the original agreement this past year, and the village’s then nine hotels generated approximately $500,000 per year.

Joe Cainkar, attorney for the village of Manteno, said Airbnb has reached agreements with the state of Illinois and the city of Chicago to collect state and city taxes.

“[Airbnb] entered into agreements with them, but they won’t enter into agreements with those smaller taxing bodies,” he said. “... The hotel tax still applies to the actual transaction itself, just Airbnb won’t collect it.”

That leaves it up to the local municipality to collect the 5% tax as outlined by the state. Cainkar said as a non-home-rule municipality, it can’t extend the tax to third-party platforms (Airbnb), so it would have to rely on the short-term rental operators to collect the fee.

The original licensing ordinance for the village’s short-term rentals included the 5% tax, but it was amended to drop the provision. During an open discussion, Parpart asked why the village would impose a new tax.

Cainkar said it wasn’t a “new tax,” as the operators were bound by the proposed ordinance to collect the tax before it was amended.

“I mean, theoretically, we could, if we wanted to, but we’re taking a hands-off approach,” he said.

LaMore said she really couldn’t comment on the tax as she owns and operates three Airbnbs in her neighborhood.

“Where does it end?” she said on the number of taxes people have to pay.

More on ordinance

The ordinance that was unanimously adopted defines a short-term rental as: any apartment, house, cottage, condominium or furnished accommodation, located in the Village, where at least one room in the dwelling is rented to an occupant for a period of less than 30 consecutive days; and all accommodations are reserved in advance.

The owner must purchase a short-term-rental operator license for a $25 fee for each operator. In addition to amending the ordinance to remove the 5% tax, it also took out a requirement of getting the license plate numbers of the renter’s vehicles and removed a requirement of 24 hours between rentals.

The ordinance doesn’t allow for rentals less than 24 hours, and that was part of the reason to have an ordinance in place to give the village some “teeth” if problems arise, such as a large-scale party of 200 people or unruly renters.

“We’re trying to prevent those problems from happening or give us a way to have a course of action to prevent them,” Trustee Joel Gesky said.