reprinted from:
Columbia visitors bureau seeks to resolve bed-tax disagreement
By Justin Willet The Convention and Visitors Bureau Advisory Board yesterday declined to support changing an ordinance governing a tax-financed tourism fund, but it pledged to improve guidelines for the fund and to work more closely with local festival organizers. The Tourism Development Fund was established after voters approved a 2 percent increase in the so-called bed tax on hotel and motel rooms in 1999. The fund came under scrutiny last month after Carrie Gartner, executive director of the Downtown Columbia Associations, questioned whether it was being managed as promised to voters. Gartner argued that because the ballot language that voters saw during the bed-tax campaign made no mention of the requirement to generate overnight stays in hotels and motels, the ordinance governing the fund also should not mention it. Gartner's comments came on the heels of an October proposal by the advisory board that called for funding advertising rather than exhibits for events and festivals that have trouble documenting overnight stays. Lorah Steiner, executive director of the Convention and Visitors Bureau, said today that the controversy of the board's October proposal was blown out of proportion. She said that it was merely an idea and that the group had planned on discussing it with festival organizers even before Gartner's comments. Steiner opened the meeting yesterday by describing the "conundrum" the board has faced since the tourism fund was established. She said the group has struggled to set objective guidelines for dispersing money designated to enhance festivals, events and attractions. "Documenting room-night generation was a real problem," Steiner said. Steiner said the board wants to create objective guidelines for all events and festivals, not take away money from festivals. Last week a subcommittee of the advisory board met to discuss ways to improve the guidelines. Its preliminary suggestions include: --Relieving festival and event organizers of the burden of conducting surveys to determine room-night generation. Festivals have used their own surveys to determine the number of people who stay overnight. The preliminary recommendation would call for the convention bureau to contract with a company to conduct surveys to shed light on their tourism, economic and growth statistics. --Providing advertising and marketing support from the tourism fund for each funded festival. --Developing mutually agreeable criteria for assessment and establishing funding levels based on how well a festival meets the criteria. --Establishing a program to assign specific applications to each board member, who would then review it and summarize it for the full board. Any revisions to the funding guidelines must be ready by April, Steiner said, when applications for tourism money are made public. She said the advisory board would continue discussing changes at its Jan. 27 meeting and take any changes to the Columbia City Council for approval. While the board didn't seem too excited about changes to the tourism fund ordinance suggested by Gartner, Steiner said she would check with city attorney Fred Boeckmann to determine if the word "festivals" needs to be added. Gartner said she was happy with yesterday's discussion but would still push to get the city council to add festivals to the tourism fund ordinance and to remove the room-night requirement. "I was very happy to see a strong verbal
commitment made by this board to festivals," she said. "This board might be
committed, but what about the next group of folks? I still want to see"
those things "in writing." |
