There was a meeting last Friday of a subcommittee of the Supervisors, Mark Luce and Bill Dodd, to take testimony about a pot of money garnered from TOT taxes and how they were going to spend it.
There is a little pot of money with the county that is 1.5% of the 12% of the TOT tax that is collected from tourists at hotels that is in the process of being divvied up. Right now it is about a million dollars and they expect it will generate around $750,000 or more each year.
There is a write up by the Napa County Convention and Visitors Bureau which details their position as well as provides background information. I have copied some of that information below, click on the "continue reading" link. Thanks to Julie Nord of the Grape Growers for passing it on to me.
What is happening is that the CVB is being drastically cut by the City and the County is only going to give them $99,000 for this year of the TOT money. In the meantime they are going to give the Parks and Open Space District the biggest chunk of that money, around $550,000. I think this is short sighted in that investment in the Visitors Bureau will generate more tax dollars by increasing tourism, and everyone will benefit from the further taxes generated by that.
You may feel that there are a lot of tourists coming through here, which there are, but there is no guarantee that will continue and any business has to devote some substantial part of its revenues to marketing or it will be in trouble. We cannot be so arrogant as to assume that visitors will automatically come here without doing anything to attract them when Sonoma and other wine country locations are literally spending millions attracting them right next door.
Also, many lodging places in Napa are not doing well, and even the top ones have a lot of vacancies during off peak times. The Sales and Marketing manager from Marriott Hotels spoke at a meeting Friday afternoon and stated that they are collecting about $1 million a year in TOT taxes in Napa, and that if the CVB plan works they could fill their off peak dates it would result in about another $400,000 in TOT taxes. That is just from one vendor, so we are talking some significant amount of money here.
It's a case of being penny wise and pound foolish, but I am afraid that the Parks and Open Space District has three votes sown up, Diane Dillon, Brad Wagenknecht, and Mark Luce, and that they will be getting the bulk of this money.
And by the way, that is more money right away than the voters were promised during the campaign, where they stated there would be a $350,000 budget.
Well, the PDF file just doesn't want to copy into this format. I will put one paragraph below, and my comments after. Most of the general drift I have described in my article already, and if you want the entire document please email me and I will send it over.
"Three Year Allocation Plan and Process, which proposes the minimum amount of funds to be allocated among the three funding areas over the next three years and how the funds will actually be allocated to specific projects or programs. In essence, the Allocation Plan and Process section calls for: (1) Reserving any Special Projects Fund fund balance to help finance the purchase of Skyline Park. (2) Allocating annual Special Projects Fund revenues: (a) 55% for Parks and Open Space programs or services (with $300,000 earmarked for Parks and Open Space District operating costs and $200,000 for the purchase of Skyline Park); (b) 10% for Visitor Management programs or services ($99,971); (c) 5% for Arts and Culture programs ($49,85); and (d) 30% to be allocated to any of the other three areas based on the specific proposals received in those areas ($299,912). (3) Fund Balance in reserve for Skyline Park purchase. In the event Skyline park is purchased and not all funds balance is needed, remaining fund balance will be allocated to parks and open space uses in subsequent years. (4) For other than the $300,000 for the Parks and Open Space District and the $200,000 for the purchase of Skyline Park, the County will issue a Request for Proposals (RFP) for up to three years of funding and evaluate responses to the RFP against the Goals, Priorities and Guiding Principles."
Note that the last paragraph of this document, and I have not included the entire document here, states that the Parks and Open Space District will receive the balance of the $200,000 per year in money used to finance the purchase of Skyline Park if it is not all used. Also, more money is probably going to be given to them out of the $299,000 that is left.
By the end of the year we could be spending a million a year on Parks and Open Space, much as I predicted during the campaign. For instance, someone at the meeting on the Oat Hill Mine Trail said that it would cost $250,000 to make needed improvements, not the $50,000 they have budgeted. Is that true? What can happen is that they can get into these things and then realize they need more money. What choice will the Sups have then, throw the project away?
Next year you are going to see some tax issues going on the ballot to further increase spending on Parks and Open Space.
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