Bishop Council slashes funding for Visitor Center
In a move business owners in Bishop surely derided as a pre-holiday turkey, the Bishop City Council voted 3 to 2 at its regular meeting on Nov. 24 to reduce funding support to the Visitor Center on Main Street (located at the Main Street entrance to Bishop City Park) from $143,000 to $75,000, a $68,000 cut.
The Visitor Center is operated by the Bishop Chamber of Commerce.
It was a move that seems to largely contradict the City’s recent efforts in support of the Tourist Business Investment District and its own widely-publicized efforts to encourage economic development. As one local merchant put it, the move forces the City into “biting the hand that feeds it through business taxes.”
The City Council’s support for the Visitor Center has been higher in the past; in 2003-2004 it was $186,000.
In large measure, the Council’s decision to maintain a $28,400 General Fund contingency for infrastructure upgrades played into its decision to cut elsewhere. Council was also influenced by the recent passage of the Bishop Tourism Improvement District, which charges a 2 percent tax on local hotels and motels that will be used to help fund the Visitor Center starting next year. It is the Council’s hope that the tax revenue will make up for any loss in funding support, as the City staff said the new BTID is expected to generate as much as $310,000 in fiscal year 2015-16.
According to Bishop Chamber Executive Tawni Thomson, “Money from BTID should begin coming in the spring, but there is always an element of not knowing what the future will bring.
“We are very disheartened by the decision,” she added. “Our 300 plus members, volunteers and community supporters continue to pour tremendous resources and energy into sustaining and improving the local economy. We do understand the City’s financial situation and anticipated some reduction once BTID gets up and running. We did not expect such a drastic reduction to come so soon.”
To offset the hardship posed to the Bishop Chamber by the cut to the Visitor Center funding, Bishop Councilman Dave Stottlemyre proposed increasing the city’s general fund support to the Chamber from $65,000 to $103,000.
Councilmember Laura Smith said she was very concerned about the deficit trend she has witnessed in her years on the City Council and the continuing dwindling of the reserve fund.
“I believe it’s (BTID) going to pay off,” she said. “Tourism is our number one resource.”
Outgoing Councilman Keith Glidewell said that he felt “it is the City’s responsibility to make it[self] a ‘destination,’ but at the same time it also has to provide much-needed deferred maintenance.” He recommended that money be used to create bike paths, repair roofs on city buildings, improve streets and sidewalks and diversify the city’s media approach.
Outgoing Mayor Jim Ellis made it clear that he had concerns that the city might be “pulling the rug out from under the Chamber,” but he hoped that the BTID revenue, combined with the money from the City, “will be a “workable” amount of funding for the Visitor Center.
Councilwoman Pat Gardner said that the City’s support of the BTID was “evidence of its vote of confidence in the Visitors Bureau,” finishing by stating that “Our support of the Chamber has not decreased, but increased.”
Stottlemyre’s attempt to amend the motion to increase the funding amount by $38,000 failed to garner support from the other councilmembers.
Councilmember Smith then made a compromise motion for $10,000 in additional support to the Bishop Chamber. The matter was resolved by a 3-2 vote with Smith, Stottlemyre, and Ellis voting “yes “and Gardner and Glidewell voting “no.”
