The Crested Butte News Serving the Gunnison Valley since 1999
Coming on the heels of a budget decrease and increasing LMD revenue
[ By Katherine Nettles ]
After taking a hit to its 2020 budget during the economic uncertainty at the onset of COVID and seeing more sustained economic strength across the valley this winter, the Gunnison County Tourism and Prosperity Partnership has come back to the Gunnison County commissioners asking to recoup some of those budget shortfalls and build up marketing, branding, visitor impact mitigation and ICELab programming at Western Colorado University.
Commissioners held a Local Marketing District (LMD) meeting with the TAPP board on March 2 for the funding request, which amounts to $350,000.
TAPP executive director John Norton reviewed that TAPP had requested a smaller budget for 2020 at the county’s request, and now on the heels of the largest lodging sales tax on record, Norton asked to reset the budget for 2021.
“We ended the year 11.5 percent up,” he said of the county’s overall 2020 lodging tax revenue, which funds the partnership.
County manager Mathew Birnie noted that county finance director Juan Guerra had analyzed the county’s fund balance, based on budgeted revenues, and the county could afford the expenditure.
“From a cash flow basis we’re comfortable,” said Birnie. “So it’s more of a policy question.”
Guerra attended the meeting and agreed, “the fund is fiscally healthy and there’s no trend to indicate that this would be a bad move.”
Norton presented a plan for the funds, categorizing it into four areas. First, winter snow marketing that begins around October or November would take up $140,509 (40 percent of the request). Then “Placemaking” at the soon to be remodeled GUC airport and other branding placements that anchor an identity for the valley would take up $150,000 (43 percent of the request). The ICElab would take up $10,813 (3 percent of the request), and the Sustainable Tourism and Outdoor Recreation Committee (STOR) would be allocated $48,687 (14 percent of the request).
Norton expounded on the specifics of these areas, particularly on the STOR committee efforts to mitigate the impacts of increasing tourism to the backcountry. “We are potty-training visitors,” he quipped. “We’re trying to get people to go to the bathroom in toilets.”
Of course, the way TAPP can do that is through informational campaigns, including signage directing people to use the loo instead of the trails or forests.
“We can’t spend our money building bathrooms, but we can direct people to them,” he said.
Norton also touched on some prominent branding placements throughout the valley and airport, and after some discussion on what those designs would look like or what story they would tell, commissioners and the TAPP board agreed that it was still too early in the process to weigh in on that. As the airport remodel takes place and the TAPP team comes up with branding designs or strategies, they promised to come back to commissioners for input.
Norton also reviewed how the TAPP team is working to incorporate four principles into its work: to prioritize summer and winter trails; synergies between the ICELab, Crested Butte Mountain Resort (CBMR), tourism and the economy; efficiency and technology; and nimbleness and speed.
Commissioner chairperson Jonathan Houck said he approved of the areas TAPP has indicated it would use the incremental funding, as did commissioners Liz Smith and Roland Mason.
The funding would require an amendment to the TAPP’s contract with the county LMD, and that will come back as an amendment for the board to approve in the coming weeks.
