STEUBENVILLE - The city's Convention and Visitors Bureau has crafted an exit plan for Executive Director Beth Wood in the event council cuts its funding.
City Council is slated to vote Tuesday on the third and final reading of a proposal to reclaim as much as $50,000 in CVB funding and shift responsibility for tourism functions to the Steubenville Port Authority.
If the proposal is adopted, which appears likely, the already cash-strapped CVB would not have enough money to sustain operations, board member Bryan Felmet said. Wood would be laid off, though she will stay on long enough to "wind things up, do all the things necessary for the transfer of responsibilities" to another agency.
Felmet, however, said the CVB board is hoping to persuade council to rethink plans to designate the port authority as heir apparent to the tourism function.
"We see it as a 'for sure' thing, that our funding will be cut to the 1.5 percent" required by state statute, Felmet said. "That's a sure thing, and it's our view that (when it happens) the Fort Steuben committee is best situated to take on this function."
The CVB by statute receives 1.5 percent of the city's hotel-motel tax receipts, money that can only be used for and by an agency promoting tourism in Steubenville. Years ago City Council, realizing more money would be needed for CVB to do its job properly, supplemented the statutory amount with an additional 1 percent. That 1 percent supplement, which amounts to roughly $45,000 or $50,000, is what City Council aims to recover to help balance the city's budget for the new fiscal year.
Mayor Domenick Mucci said the CVB budget reduction was a necessity for the city, itself facing a deficit in the 2012 budget year.
"We have nothing against tourism, nothing against the CVB," he said. "The City of Steubenville itself has made some very hard decisions, city employees have made hard, hard decisions. And it's not just here - nationally, everybody is tightening their belts. That 1 percent (cut from CVB) will help reduce our projected 2012 deficit. Obviously, it's not going to resolve our deficit, but it will help reduce it."
Mucci also said he liked the idea of putting the Fort Steuben committee in charge of tourism, saying from the start he'd questioned the wisdom of putting the city's port authority, largely inactive and lacking its full complement of members, in charge of tourism, particularly when talks are under way with Jefferson County commissioners to form a countywide port authority.
He applauded the CVB board's decision to step aside if need be.
"I think it's a wise move and I whole-heartedly support it," Mucci said. "And from my general conversations walking through the halls and talking with different members of council and the administration, it seems to be acceptable to everyone. It only makes sense they have experience in tourism and they're in the same structure, the same location, so a lot of the groundwork that already has been laid by the hard work of the CVB and its board can continue.
Felmet, likewise, said the CVB board had reservations about shifting responsibility for tourist-generating activities to a group that itself is in a state of flux.
"We have nothing against the Port Authority," Felmet said. "It's a matter of general principal. The Port Authority is a very good organization, but it's just the status of our current port authority and the fact that it's up in the air that has us concerned. They (the city) are in negotiations with the county to form a countywide port authority. All things taken into account, this is a much-better (solution) for tourism than to transfer it to a port authority that's not already up and running, productive and vibrant."
Based on informal discussions with Law Director S. Gary Repella, Mucci said it appears the third reading can proceed as planned whether the destination agency remains the same or not. Any changes designating the Fort Steuben committee rather than the port authority to carry on tourism functions could be accomplished via an amendment, he said.
"The important thing is that tourism continues to exist in the City of Steubenville, that the activities being programmed by the CVB continue," Mucci added. "This week and next week alone, we have the light-up ceremonies at the fort and the annual Christmas parade. Those activities need to continue. There's still a lot of work ahead of them and ahead of us before this comes to a conclusion."
The CVB had been operating on a bare-bones, roughly $112,000 yearly budget even before council proposed withdrawing its funding. To offset declining revenues, the board already had laid off Wood's assistant, eliminated trade shows and printing.
Ironically, the Marcellus and Utica shale boom has local hotels operating at capacity and in coming months the hotel-motel tax receipts are expected to increase accordingly.
Felmet said Wood had worked hard to promote the city, even with the limited funding they received.
"Beth made a lot of inroads, she'd taken on additional duties," he said. "The CVB was not supposed to be responsible for parades, for light-up nights or the farmers' market, those kinds of things, but those things fell upon the CVB because no one else wanted to do them. We were glad to do them, and I think Beth did a wonderful job with them and with promoting other festivals and events, as well as accommodating the university and its visitors.
"I'm very appreciative of her hard work, all she's done for the CVB as executive director these last 11 and a half years. She's not a public figure, she was never looking to be the face of Steubenville - she's not competitive in that way. But she's very skilled in getting the most she can for the bed tax dollars. Other people may think they can do better, we hope they can. We're always looking to do things better," he said.
Woods, earlier, had declined to discuss the actions charted by the board during Thursday's emergency meeting.
The meeting, she said, "was to discuss where things are going, see what the board was thinking and bring everyone up to speed" in advance of Tuesday's City Council meeting. She'd classified it as "mostly informational."
"We don't want to classify it as a fight," she added. "We all want what's best for Steubenville, that's where we're coming from."
(Harris can be contacted at lharris@heraldstaronline.com.)
