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The Humboldt County Board of Supervisors engaged in a lengthy, fraught and at times testy discussion on Monday about how best to market our region to tourists while the county government is in the midst of a budget crisis.

The specific question on the table was whether the county should stop directing hotel bed tax revenues (aka transient occupancy taxes, or TOT) to the Humboldt County Visitors Bureau (HCVB), a nonprofit that has served as the county’s designated marketing organization since its establishment in 1979.

Ultimately, the board chose to extend its contract with the bureau for just six more months, a move that renders the long-term future of the organization uncertain while disappointing its board of directors and executive director, Julie Benbow.

The board also voted to allocate nearly $200,000 in tourism and marketing funds to the county’s own Office of Economic Development, which will use that money to conduct a marketing assessment in collaboration with local cities. 

Lastly, the board allocated $10,000 to the Loleta Chamber of Commerce and $25,000 to the McKinleyville Chamber of Commerce, with those funds coming from Measure J, a two percent increase in the county’s hotel bed tax, approved by voters in 2022.

In introductory remarks to the board, Scott Adair, the county’s director of economic development, said county staff, local stakeholders and the board itself have discussed these tourism and marketing matters “ad nauseam” over the past year. Staff’s recommendation was to sever ties with the HCVB now, meaning its contract would expire with the end of the fiscal year on June 30.

In recent months, an ad hoc committee of the board, composed of Fifth District Supervisor Steve Madrone and Second District Supervisor Michelle Bushnell, has met with local chambers of commerce, the HCVB and other stakeholders, and their recommendation was to redirect funds currently being spent on travel and tourism activities toward an in-depth marketing assessment in collaboration with local cities, tourism districts and partners in the private sector.

For the upcoming 2024-25 fiscal year, $639,712 has been budgeted for tourism and marketing services. The ad hoc committee decided that this isn’t enough money to support a robust marketing campaign and recommended spending that money instead on county-wide travel and tourism efforts. 

Another reason cited for cutting ties with the HCVB was this: The bureau has failed to meet it contractual obligation to regularly submit detailed financial reports to the county – this according to Adair, Bushnell, Madrone and County Administrative Officer Elishia Hayes.

Bushnell defended the county’s pivot away from the HCVB, saying, “This in no way is a money grab … .This is really us trying to be responsible.”

Madrone said the county should improve collaboration with local municipal governments, adding that it’s “long overdue that we take a comprehensive view” of the various tourism marketing efforts in the region.

During the public comment period, a number of people spoke in defense of the HCVB, including leaders from local chambers of commerce. 

Benbow, the HCVB’s executive director, argued that her organization has met its contractual obligations, and she warned the board against cutting off its financial support. Doing so would sever important relationships that the bureau has formed with organizations across the country and destroy a reputation taken decades to build, she said.

“We believe that the county staff don’t have the professional tourism marketing expertise to effectively or efficiently replicate the many things that we currently do for Humboldt and its residents and its businesses,” Benbow said. “So we respectfully request that any decision made today, you do it knowing that it’s going to be a huge gamble.”

Ken Hamik, president of the HCVB board, also defended the organization. 

“By focusing on its mission, the bureau has been over-performing what the county has been investing … ,” he said. “We have the No. 1, by far, website in the county, the most visited by anybody, and it just cannot be recreated.”

When the matter came back to the board for discussion, First District Supervisor and board Chair Rex Bohn said he’s a big supporter of the HCVB and does not like the idea of throwing them out.

But Cody Roggatz, the county’s director of aviation, said his department has not gotten the support and partnership it needs from the HCVB. He also read from the organization’s contract with the county, saying that an obligation to hire an independent auditor to conduct an annual financial review has not been met.

Bushnell said she thinks Benbow and the HCVB have done a good job, “but frankly, there’s just not enough funding to market the county [in] the way it needs to be. … In our budget crisis that we’re having, we’re trying to look for ways to really be more efficient and to do a better job.”

Fourth District Supervisor Natalie Arroyo agreed. “There’s just not enough in this pot to be effective,” she said.

As the meeting dragged into the lunch hour, things started to get a bit heated. Third District Supervisor Mike Wilson took issue with a suggestion from Madrone to give a bit more of the limited Measure J revenues to the McKinleyville and Loleta chambers of commerce. Micromanaging such funds while the board was trying to make a much larger decision “muddies the waters,” drawing the board into a complicated rabbit hole, Wilson said.

Peeved, Madrone said he’s been advocating for McKinleyville to get a larger slice of the pie for years, and he voiced frustration with organizations acting like they’re entitled to certain pots of money.

“I just feel very strongly that Loleta and McKinleyville absolutely should be getting some share from this,” he said. “These are not entitlements. They’re going to change in six months, so get over it.”

Bushnell made a motion to extend the county’s contract with the HCVB for six months but later withdrew it in frustration when it looked like she wasn’t getting support from the rest of the board.

Ultimately, Madrone wound up making a very similar motion, proposing to extend the county’s contract with the bureau for six months with an allocation of $145,589.50 while allocating $10,000 to the Loleta Chamber of Commerce and $25,000 to the McKinleyville Chamber of Commerce through the use of Measure J. The motion also called for $195,589.50 in tourism and marketing funds to be used for the marketing assessment.

Bohn voted against the measure because it called for a termination of the county’s relationship with the HCVB six months hence. But the other four board members voted yes, so the motion carried 4-1.

Reached after the decision Monday, Benbow said she felt positive about the amount of support the HCVB received from the community at the meeting and said she and her board are “thrilled” that they have six more months to come up with “creative and visionary strategies” to market the county.

She also suggested that the county may regret its decision to cut off the organization. 

”I know the Economic Development staff is not in any position to take over any of the professional marketing endeavors that we do,” she said. “They’re quite overstretched, and none of them have tourism marketing experience or the contacts that the bureau have developed over the years with national and international media.”

The bureau’s website gets more than 1.2 million visitors a year, she said.

The HCVB’s board of directors will meet in the next few days to discuss what comes next and exploring other potential revenue sources, Benbow said.

During today’s meeting, Arroyo mentioned the possibility of issuing a request for proposals from other agencies to take over tourism marketing, but Benbow said such a process would be long and involved.

Asked what the HCVB will do if this really is the end of the line for county financing, Benbow vowed to plough ahead.

“I think that because we have such a commitment to not letting the county residents and businesses down, we would do our utmost not to totally stop our services but to work with the county if we can to continue until they come up with a model that is different – or a replacement.”

Measure J revenues

Earlier in the meeting, in deliberations that were only marginally less contentious, the board divvied up $350,000 from Measure J revenues as follows: 

• $150,000 to the Ink People Center for the Arts for projects with an economic driver; 
• $100,000 set aside in a Housing Trust Fund;
• $45,000 to the Aviation Department to create a destination marketing budget for the Humboldt County Airport; 
• $30,000 to the Humboldt-Del Norte Film Commission as matching funds for the three-day, Star Wars-themed Forest Moon Festival; and
• $25,000 to the Economic Development Division for administrative costs to manage the above projects and contracts.

That $350,000 represents less than 40 percent of the $880,000 in projected Measure J revenues for the upcoming fiscal year, and the board voted to keep the remainder in the county’s General Fund as a rainy day investment.

“If it remains unallocated,” a staff report explains, “[those] funds will be available to help the county maintain essential services in future years … ; however should that not be needed, the funds will be available for additional tourism activities.”

Humboldt-Del Norte County Film Commissioner Cassandra Hesseltine made a pitch for more money, saying her small staff will be unable to throw the third annual Forest Moon Festival next year on “a shoestring budget.” She noted that the latest Apple iPhone 15 advertising campaign features Star Wars “costumers” headed to a convention, an indication of the ongoing popularity of the franchise.

Hesseltine also said that Academy Award-winning writer and director Alexander Payne recently approached the commission about the possibility of the Forest Moon Festival hosting the world premiere of a documentary about Irvin Kushner, director of 1980’s The Empire Strikes Back.

Leslie Castellano, Eureka city councilmember and executive director of the Ink People Center for the Arts, spoke on behalf of the Humboldt Creative Alliance, a group the includes the Ink People, Centro del Pueblo, Playhouse Arts and North Coast Repertory Theater.

Staff’s recommendation did not include any money set aside for a Housing Trust Fund, but Wilson advocated for it, saying that by simply setting the $100,000 aside with that earmark on it, the county will be able to qualify for state and federal housing development funding.

The rest of the board agreed, and the above-referenced funding amounts were approved unanimously.

Reached after the decision, Hesseltine said she feels compassion for county staff and the Board of Supervisors having to make tough financial decisions during the budget crisis. But still, the cut in funding to the film commission is “unfortunate.”

With a staff of just 2.5 full-time employees, the commission is already overworked, she said. The Forest Moon Festival has proved to be a success, “but now I have to spend more time on top of everything else to go hunt money,” Hesseltine said. “And that’s brutal because what do I give up?”

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Here’s video of the meeting, courtesy Access Humboldt: