Othello Council discusses tourism budget

OTHELLO — Monday’s regular Othello City Council meeting featured a discussion between council members regarding the funding for Othello organizations and agencies that promote tourism.

Othello Finance Director Spencer Williams explained the subject up for discussion. 

“We'll do the formal adoption with the regular city budget, but I want to introduce it tonight,” Williams said. “As you know, we collect lodging tax dollars … it's a restricted pot of money that we collect from the hotels that operate here in the city. The money is collected in its own fund and it's dispersed to organizations and events that promote tourism within the city of Othello. The whole point of this money is to bring people outside of the city, to inside of the city, and to do that we have a certain amount of dollars there that we have to work with, and we allocate those dollars among different events in the city.”

Williams said the allocation is done by the city’s lodging tax advisory committee before being brought to the council for discussion. 

“This committee met, and we had roughly $120,000 that we're working with this year,” Williams said. “That committee generally likes to have about $30,000 leftover, which leaves us about $90,000.”

The allocations included 14 organizations, the ones with the highest allocations being the Othello Fair Association, the Greater Othello Chamber of Commerce, the Othello Rodeo Association, the Sandhill Crane Festival, the Christmas Fireworks Display and the Othello Holiday Committee. 

Council member Mark Snyder commented on the allocations.

“So the Sandhill Crane Festival, that's one of our biggest draws here,” Snyder said. “I mean, the town's packed when that goes on, and they requested $11,000, they got $10,000. We got other ones that requested a lot less money and got a lot more, and I was just wondering why we wouldn't fund them fully when they bring more people than a lot of these other things on there.”

According to the original list of allocations, the Chamber of Commerce was given $17,500, $1,750 more than it requested, and the Sandhill Crane Festival was given $10,000, $1000 less than it requested.

Council member John Lallas also said he would like to move some of the funds for the Chamber of Commerce to the Sandhill Crane Festival.

“I agree 100% with Mark. We're known statewide for the Sandhill Crane Festival. It's something we should be promoting on a state level we do every year,” Lallas said. “When you're looking at tourism in a tourism fund, you're looking at bringing people to your community from outside your community.”

Lallas said that chamber events are for people within Othello, and don’t really bring people in from outside Othello, and therefore should not be a priority for tourism funding.

The council agreed to recommend to the committee that it take $1000 in allocations from the chamber and give that to the Sandhill Crane Festival.

Later in the meeting, during the council’s continued budget discussions, council member Corey Everett returned to the topic of the chamber.

“So I spent some time this week talking to a couple of ladies from the chamber. They're doing good things for the city,” Everett said. “They're doing the movies in the park, they're doing the things out here on Main Street, and they want to do more programs for the people of the city. So if we're going to take $1000 from the tourism fund, and like I said, I think you're right, it should have been (that way), I'd like to add that money here … I just think they're very ambitious, they're very excited, and they have some good ideas.”

The rest of the council agreed to this addition to their general fund. 

Gabriel Davis may be reached at gdavis@columbiabasinherald.com. Download the Columbia Basin Herald app on iOS and Android.

    The Othello City Hall, pictured, where the City Council met Monday evening for the regular meeting, during which the council discussed tourism funding for organizations in Othello.
  

    Tourism-focused organizations like the Old Hotel, pictured, or the Othello Fair and Rodeo Associations, are given funding from lodging taxes in Othello annually to help draw more people to the city.