Moses Lake chamber requests funding from city

MOSES LAKE — The Moses Lake Chamber of Commerce asked Moses Lake City Council to appropriate 5 percent of the city’s lodging tax revenue to pay for the visitor center in 2010.

Chamber Executive Director Debbie Doran-Martinez said the cost to run the visitor center far exceeded the amount of funds given to the chamber from the city.

“The chamber feels tourism is very important to our community and would like to see our efforts continue,” she stated in a letter to the city council. “The chamber is no longer able to run 82 percent of the operation. The chamber is looking for a solution to this funding issue.”

She explained the city gives the chamber $3,000 for tourism, Internet and Web hosting. Doran-Martinez said they also receive funding for tourism mailings they send and the cost is about the same as the compensation.

She said if the 5 percent request is based on the 2008 lodging tax revenue, it would equate to $27,994. The 2008 revenue was chosen because the 2009 fiscal year is not over.

Doran-Martinez said a large cost is associated with staffing.

The visitor center is open 2,096 hours per year from Labor Day to Memorial Day. It’s open Monday through Saturday.

“The chamber has been paying out of pocket roughly $40,000 to run the visitor center with reimbursement from the city of $7,600 total,” she said.

Mayor Ron Covey asked if it would be acceptable for the council and staff to take the request under advisement for the next two weeks since they received the request that night.

Doran-Martinez agreed to his request.

She said the chamber does not receive any revenue from operating the visitor center.

“We just need to stop the hemorrhaging,” she said. “We would like to do some stuff to our building to compliment what the city complex is doing and I know tourism money can’t do that but chamber money can do that and we would like to do that. That’s one of the reasons why we delved into this last week.”

Covey called the visitor center a great cause and said the council wants to continue their support.

Councilmember Jim Liebrecht asked about what form of advertisement they do for the city.

“There is no advertisement being done,” Doran-Martinez said. “There’s a marketing budget through Bill Burke that the city pays for from those funds. I’m not suggesting that we deviate from that. I think that’s good. I think … some of the things in his budget benefit our community and our citizens and don’t generate tourists coming to town.”

“What I’m getting down to is the fact that you have membership that pays a fee to you,” Liebrecht said. “The fact is that $27,000, that’s a nice chunk of money for that.”

Doran-Martinez said the chamber operates on a budget of $127,000. She said $90,000 is from membership dues and the rest is from fund-raisers held by the chamber.

She said the operation of the visitor’s center comes from those funds.