Tourism arm a failure?

PROVO — The Utah Valley Convention and Visitors Bureau will receive the $1.1 million called for in its 2006 business plan, but Utah County Commission Chairman Jerry Grover isn't happy about it.

Hours after casting the lone dissenting vote for the allocation of funds Tuesday, Grover told the Deseret Morning News that he believes the UVCVB as a private entity is "a failure" and suggested that the county would be better off resuming control of its tourism arm.

"If all (the UVCVB is) going to do is run the visitors center and run a bunch of advertising campaigns, the county can do that probably just as cheap or cheaper," Grover said.

Grover's frustration stems from what he says are becoming regular requests from the UVCVB for more funding without the results to justify such increases.

The commission chairman said the agreement in August 2003 when the UVCVB privatized was that two-thirds of the county's transient room tax (hotel tax), calculated on a three-year average, would be the bureau's source of income.

For 2006, the UVCVB is entitled to $625,000 in transient room tax, which represents about 56 percent of its budget. The UVCVB requested that the remaining $484,000 come from the tourism, recreation, cultural and convention tax (restaurant tax).

A week ago, the Utah County Commission — minus Grover, who was sick — voted to approve the UVCVB's request for $625,000 in hotel tax, as well as $121,000 of the requested restaurant tax funds.

At the time, Commissioners Larry Ellertson and Steve White said some research needed to be done to see if a $1.7 million surplus of restaurant tax that had been on the county books since 1999 could be used to fund the additional $363,000 requested by the bureau in its business plan.

And on Tuesday the two commissioners voted to do just that, giving the UVCVB the majority needed to approve the additional funding.

Ellertson said he views the funding of the UVCVB as an investment.

"Part of the anticipated use of the (restaurant tax) that we had there was to use it to promote, so let's invest it," he said. "That's what we're counting on, that it's an investment rather than a cost or an expense."

But Grover hasn't been satisfied with the UVCVB's production in its first 2 1/8 years as a private entity. The bureau's operations should be funded by its share of the transient room tax, he said, thus providing incentive for its sales representatives to increase the cash flow.

"But now they're trying to go back and get previous (restaurant tax) surplus that was accumulated years prior to them even coming into existence," he said.

The county had planned, Grover said, to use the majority of that surplus for prepayment of outstanding bonds.