PORT ANGELES — In a change of course, the city is seeking competitive proposals for operating the visitor center and tourism marketing in 2015, a move that could leave the Port Angeles Regional Chamber of Commerce facing financial difficulties.
The switch came after the chamber, the center’s longtime operator, submitted a $161,876 plan for 2015 visitor center operations that was nearly three times the $64,000 the city will dedicate in lodging-tax proceeds to run the facility.
Chamber Executive Director Russ Veenema, who said the chamber did not know of the $64,000 limit when the proposal was submitted, predicted the chamber will submit a new, lower proposal but defended the original plan for running the facility at 121 E. Railroad Ave.
“The actual cost of running the visitor center is more than $64,000,” Veenema said.
Veenema said last week that the chamber proposal includes tourism marketing, which covers brochures, postage and website costs.
Of the total chamber proposal, $93,000 was in salary and benefits for two paid staff members — Veenema and Charlie Comstock, who does marketing and helps run the center.
The chamber, which has been receiving lodging taxes to run the facility without going through a competitive process, will ask for an extension to resubmit new proposals, chamber board members decided Monday in a special meeting.
At the meeting, City Manager Dan McKeen said the $64,000 total is based on information provided by the chamber, adding that he was “surprised” the chamber did not also submit a proposal for marketing.
“The difficulty was how to deal with the unbundling of the issue,” Veenema said.
“That’s what this board is grappling with.”
Staff cuts could be inevitable if the chamber does not run the center or conduct tourism marketing.
“We would have to take a look at the organization and see how we’re staffed and all operating costs,” Veenema said.
The proposal for marketing is due by Nov. 12.
City officials still must issue a request for proposals for running the visitor center, which houses the chamber’s two offices, and a deadline date has not been set, Nathan West, the city community and economic development director, said at the board meeting.
West said later Monday he expects the request for proposal will be sent out Wednesday with a probable deadline date of early December.
The city is seeking marketing contract proposals of between $100,000 and $175,000.
“We’d love to see proposals come from all qualified marketing entities, the chamber, the [Olympic Peninsula] visitor Bureau, private sector marketing firms, anyone,” West said.
Separating the marketing and visitor center contracts was “the big issue” for the chamber, Veenema said last week.
“In reality, we are a team player, and we need to try to put this together in the budget frames the city would like to see, so we will be working on that.”
West said the city had good reason to initially ask only the chamber for a proposal.
“It goes back to, we have a functioning visitor center with a lot of very valuable volunteers, and we want to be extremely respectful of those volunteers,” West said last week.
But city officials heard from members of the public who questioned why the city was not following “an open and fair process,” West said.
In combination with the budget the chamber submitted, opening the process to competition “was the right thing to do,” he added.
The chamber, which has a 2014 budget of $465,000, is receiving $340,000 in lodging taxes in 2014 for tourism marketing and the visitor center under a five-year non-competitive contract that ends Dec. 31.
The chamber has received visitor center funding without competition for the past 10 years, McKeen said in an earlier interview.
City officials decided to open up the process for funding the visitor center after McKeen in August expressed concerns over the center being closed for three of four MV Coho ferry runs from Canada during the peak visitor season.
Since then, the chamber has expanded visitor center hours to open at 7:45 a.m. and close at 5:15 p.m. or 5:30 p.m. during the peak season, which begins in June and ends in September.
Lodging-tax funding to the chamber in 2014 includes $64,000 for visitor center operating costs, $65,000 for administrative support and contract management, and $70,000 for event-tourism project grants.
“I really feel like we are almost getting fired,” Veenema said.
The city will take over in 2015 the event-tourism projects that the chamber has managed this year, chamber President Todd Ortloff, station manager of KONP radio, said Monday in a later interview.
City Parks and Recreation has requested $62,000 in lodging taxes for personnel, maintenance and materials to host baseball, softball and basketball tournaments and other non-city events such as the Juan de Fuca Festival of the Arts and the North Olympic Discovery Marathon, according to the department’s application.
The city Lodging Tax Committee had been scheduled to review applications for lodging tax funds at an Oct. 29 meeting that was cancelled due to lack of a quorum, West said.
The meeting has not been rescheduled.
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Senior Staff Writer Paul Gottlieb can be reached at 360-452-2345, ext. 5060, or at pgottlieb@peninsuladailynews.com.