The Tourism Board met last night, and Gossips did not attend the meeting. Aliya Schneider of the Register-Star, however, did, and her report on the meeting appeared in the paper today: "Tourism Board proposes $220K budget for 2022." Since this iteration of the Tourism Board was created in January 2020, it has doled out more than $400,000.
Interesting - if you take out 2022 and the current board and insert 2018/2019 and insert the original board and the previosu common council, you couldn't really tell the difference in statements like, "Tourism is Hudson's biggest industry" "We need recognize and promote it"
ReplyDeleteYet - those now supporting this, were then clutching their pearls and wild eyed screaming in meetings we were wasting money and we should not promote anything that Hudson promoted itself just fine.
Funny how once you are appointed or elected to office, your armchair ideas and politics change, when it comes to the real world.
And - had the City not rushed to divert the STR tax (paid by those whos heads are in beds and not by residents) funds from the board, they wouldn't have to be asking for $220K as it would have been split accordingly - as the law was first written - and the optics would not be so staggering now.
But, the more you know.
This all reads like an absurdist play. The Tourist Board - made up mostly of people who seem to oppose tourism - doled out $400,000 to projects that for the most part had nothing to do with actual tourism is now asking for $ to promote tourism because of it's importance to the life of Hudson. WTF?
ReplyDeleteThe taxpayers should get a full report on the $400,000+ disbursed to various businesses, paying particular attention to the impact on tourism, before any additional funding is provided to the Tourism Board. Were there any actual events or impacts on tourism? To those of us in the cheap seats, it feels like the tourism board just threw money out the window to those who grabbed it the quickest with zero understanding or implication as to how tourism would be impacted. It seems like a terrible waste, and someone should be held accountable (hint: the Tourism Board).
ReplyDeleteYou are ABSOLUTELY right! The Tourism Board should not be funded one additional cent until they produce a report outlining the return on investment of the $400K they gave to each other and their friends. It's shocking that this sort of corruption and cronyism goes unchecked by the Common Council President, Common Council, and Mayor (who appointed the members of the board).
DeleteI would also like to know who received the awards and what their personal and familial relationships were to members of the board.
ReplyDeleteWhat objective criteria are used to evaluate applications?
In the piece cited by Carole one of the board members stated that she "feels" like she knows people talented enough to deliver on McManus's ideas.
Who is evaluating whether these are ideas will actually generate increased tourism? What objective evaluation will be applied to the "feeling" that my friends are talented?
400k was a lot of money to spend without any ROI data to back it up.
For goodness sakes, I may be an armchair observer for the last few years, but have had a big stake (and taxpayer) in Hudson for a long time. Hudson does promote itself, more and more every year, look at today's article posted above from "The Financial Times". Hudson constantly reinvents itself and it is currently bursting at the seams. We do not need to promote tourism, it's being done by the antiques dealers, the artists, the writers, the restauranteurs, etc. Put the money where it's needed, infrastructure, housing, improve the riverfront, get rid of the trucks, and yes, I too would like to see a report of where the $400,000 went. Unbelievable.
ReplyDelete