At Island Yoga Center, owners Kathryn Payne and Elizabeth Freeman are facing a conundrum at the small studio they’ve owned for nearly six years.
With the escalating costs of Island life, they feel a need to raise their class prices and pay their instructors more, something they’ve not done for four years, Payne said. At the same time, the state has proposed taxing yoga classes for the first time, which would mean a 9 percent increase to yoga students.
Payne and Freeman feel they cannot impose their own fee increase on top of the state’s tax increase, they said, as that would result in a nearly 20 percent increase to their clients.
A meeting in Olympia on Nov. 17 will determine how the state will proceed with the proposed tax hike, but Payne and Freeman are clear about their position, especially given the recession.
“This is the worst time to raise taxes on a business,” Payne said. “That 9 percent increase should go to the teachers.”
If the tax increase is put into effect, the two women said, they’ll keep their prices as they are and, in effect, offer yoga as a community service.
“Nobody expects to pay their mortgage with yoga teaching,” Payne said, but some teachers do rely on the income to help with monthly expenses.
“When prices started to go up, we started to feel the squeeze,” she added.
Both women credit landlords Norm and Vicky Mathews for Island Yoga Center’s comparatively low prices over the years.
“They have virtually not raised our rent in all this time,” Payne said.
Looking ahead, both women expect a good turnout at their classes, despite the difficulties all around — and in fact practicing yoga might offer a way to cope with the tensions of the times.
“Maybe they’re coming to yoga because they are stressed out about the recession,” Freeman said about students who recently took an introductory class at the studio.
“It is like a mini-holiday,” Payne said. “You take a class for an hour and a half. You go and feel refreshed.”
Students often end classes looking as though they had been on vacation and are renewed.
“It’s restful, deeply restful,” Payne said.
