View from Harbor Street
By David Buckingham

To become and remain vibrant, the City of Morro Bay must constantly assess and optimize all of our activities and relationships — especially those that have a significant impact on our finances and most important services.

A key economic driver in Morro Bay is tourism. As we move forward and focus on ways to continue to provide the essential services our community expects like parks, streets, police, and fire protection, the model for how we market the destination of Morro Bay to visitors is vital.

While these services are largely paid for with sales taxes (collected when consumers spend at places like restaurants, retail shops, and gas stations) and transient occupancy tax (collected on a lodging bill paid at our hotels, RV parks, and vacation rentals), the City works to boost those revenue collections by marketing Morro Bay effectively through a Tourism Business Improvement District assessment.

This 3-percent fee, also added to hotel stays, is specifically required to be used for the promotion of tourism in Morro Bay, especially in order to encourage more lodging stays. More visitors, means more revenue and the ability to pay for those core public services.

[pullquote align=”full” cite=”David Buckingham” link=”” color=”#0066FF” class=”” size=””]The City always wants to ensure we’re doing the best we can with these sources of revenue, which help us remain a competitive and vibrant community that people want to live, work and play in.[/pullquote]

The City always wants to ensure we’re doing the best we can with these sources of revenue, which help us remain a competitive and vibrant community that people want to live, work and play in.

That’s why the City Council adopted the following important goal for this year: “Evaluate, analyze and present to council alternate models for partnerships between the City and both the Chamber of Commerce (Chamber) and the Morro Bay Tourism Bureau (MBTB).” Staff and Council are actively working on both facets of this goal.

The City decision to partner with the Chamber on a Visitor’s Center is an “alternate model” for the City-Chamber partnership with the business community represented by the Chamber.

City staff is now focused on the second part of the goal — evaluating the tourism promotion model. The City Council will hold a study session at 4 p.m. Tuesday, Sept. 22.

After the study session, the Council may choose to consider the issue further, direct some change, or direct that nothing change. The City hopes to get great public input and participation in the study session and let us know, anytime, your thoughts and ideas.

The Morro Bay TBID, a public entity, was created through an official civic process to provide a source of funds to improve tourism in the community.

The City Council must appoint the seven members of the TBID board and that board provides a similar service as the City’s Public Works Advisory Board or Harbor Advisory Board — to advise the Council on the most efficient and effective use of the public funds generated by the TBID.  State law defines that relationship.

Under the law, TBID-assessed funds are public monies and the City Council and certain staff have a binding requirement to ensure TBID funds are used appropriately. These officials have a responsibility to provide close oversight over every expenditure of TBID funds.

That is a crucial aspect of TBIDs — those are community funds that require thoughtful management by the City. They are not the funds of any specific business, or a group of businesses, and the City controls those funds.

The City also created a private, non-profit Morro Bay Tourism Bureau to utilize the TBID-assessed funds for tourism marketing and promotions. The existing arrangement called for the City to hand over to the Bureau nearly all of the $700,000 collected last year and let the contractor make all decisions about tourism marketing.

While the MBTB Board and TBID Board have the same members, the Bureau’s staff is completely independent of any City oversight and reports solely to the MBTB. There is no direct relationship between the bureau staff and City staff.

A large number of California cities and all cities in SLO County have a different model. Each retains the critical component of an official, Council-appointed advisory board with the responsibility to provide advice and advocacy on the use of TBID-assessed funds. Tourism staff in those cities, however, is part of the City staff.

In San Luis Obispo, the tourism manager reports to the City’s economic development manager. In Pismo Beach, the executive director of the Conference and Visitors Bureau is appointed by and reports directly to the city manager. Paso Robles, Atascadero and Arroyo Grande all have similar models and are worth a full evaluation and analysis.

We look forward to your input, as we continue to evaluate and analyze the best model to provide exceptional destination marketing for the City of Morro Bay. Thoughtful consideration must be given to not only an effective model, but also one that ensures the fiduciary responsibility of the community government is guaranteed and completely transparent.

As always, your comments are deeply valued. You can contact Deputy City Manager, Sam Taylor at: [email protected] or send me an email at: [email protected].

David Buckingham is the city manager of Morro Bay. His “A View From Harbor Street” column is a regular feature of The Bay News. Send Letters to the Editor to: [email protected].