Politicians clash over county visitors association

Agency argues value as legislature cuts budget and support

By FRITZ MAYER

MONTICELLO, NY — Tempers flared over the process for appointing members to the agency that promotes tourism in the county. Legislators were set to vote on a resolution to approve the new board of the Sullivan County Visitors Association (SCVA), when Woody Wood, the chairman of the Community and Economic Development Committee, made a motion to table the resolution to allow the county attorney time to study the agency’s bylaws to determine if they were being followed regarding the selection of board members.

With several board members of SCVA looking on, legislator Leni Binder objected that the Republicans had not been informed that the motion to table was coming, nor had anyone from SCVA been informed. Binder said, “The whole process of what we’ve done with this group is an insult.”

County attorney Sam Yasgur said his review of the bylaws, dating back to 1997, indicated that they weren’t being strictly followed.

Norman Duttweiler, the SCVA treasurer, said the bylaws had been updated in 2002, and Yasgur was not looking at most recent bylaws. Even though the legislature must approve the makeup of the SCVA board, they must first be elected by the SCVA membership.

In a subsequent interview, Duttweiler said the bylaws call for the legislature to approve the board by resolution in October of each year, and that hadn’t happened in any previous years because of an oversight.

At the meeting, the committee voted three to two to postpone the vote on the board.

This comes as the SCVA budget has been cut from $800,000 in the tentative budget to $531,000 in the final budget. County manager David Fanslau is in the process of negotiating the contract between the county and the SCVA.

Duttweiler called the cuts “draconian.” He also said that as the producing director of the Forestburgh Playhouse, he understands dealing with a tight budget, such as the one the county is faced with now. However, he said it doesn’t make any sense to so steeply cut the marketing of the county because it brings in significant tax revenues.

Tourism is the second largest industry in the county, and Roberta Byron-Lockwood, the president and CEO of SCVA, has repeatedly made the point to lawmakers that money spent on the tourism promotion organization brings a significant return. A study commissioned by New York State and its counties, and released at the end of December 2007, showed that in 2006 tourism in the county contributed almost $290 million to the economy. The study, conducted by Tourism Economics, a division of Oxford Economics, USA, also found that in 2006, tourism was responsible for $18.9 million in tax revenues to the county. In that same year, the county invested $805,000 in the SCVA. By extrapolation, SCVA officials say that if the county invests only $531,000 in the SCVA, the taxes from tourism could slip to $12.2 million.

Not all of the lawmakers buy the figures. Legislator Ron Hiatt quoted Mark Twain and said, “There’s three kinds of lies: lies, damn lies and statistics.” He said SCVA is asking for too much money.

In the meantime, some of the legislators and county officials have been pushing to have the SCVA consolidate operations with two other county agencies, the Sullivan County Chamber of Commerce and the Sullivan County Partnership for Economic Development, a concept that does not seem likely to advance much this year.

Also, county officials want SCVA to move out of the government center because of space considerations. The SCVA currently pays rent to the county for office space. Duttweiler said moving the offices would present a hardship to the agency.