Convention Bureau Vote A Good Sign

Good for the Spokane City Council. After rattling a saber over the agency that manages our county’s $71 million convention and visitors business, the council voted unanimously to keep the agency going, and the conventions coming.

It did the right thing.

The people of Spokane County should find this decision encouraging. It indicates the City Council’s new majority can listen, learn and act in the best interests of the community.

Our community’s best interests will be found when our leaders recognize that the important contest in Spokane is not between local residents and interest groups. The most important competition is between Spokane and other metropolitan areas. That competition is intense, in the convention trade. It also is intense in the business-recruitment realm, a matter of importance to Spokane’s future.

Common sense can tell us what will happen if a group planning a convention or a business relocation eyeballs Spokane and sees the political equivalent of a junior high school food fight: government instability, anti-business litigating, and divisiveness even among fellow advocates for economic development.

What will happen is, conventions and would-be employers will go to Boise instead. Or Madison, Wis. Or Portland. Or Denver. Or any one of hundreds of cities that have their acts together and work aggressively to attract new visitors and investors.

Tourism and convention jobs became a political issue last year. At the issue’s root was an old controversy. Metropolitan Mortgage, patron of the council’s new majority, wanted a new, publicly financed convention facility built on some riverbank land it owns, but planners concluded a site across the street from the current convention center made more sense.

In recent weeks, some of Metropolitan’s friends on the council - notably John Talbott and Steve Eugster - began voicing questions about whether the city should continue funding the Spokane Area Convention and Visitors Bureau as it has done for a dozen years.

The CVB receives 38 percent of its budget from the city; this money is simply pass-through revenue from the hotel-motel tax and by law cannot be used elsewhere in the city budget. The money comes from outsiders and goes to services outsiders need.

The CVB is not a political organization. It’s a professional organization, and hundreds of cities have one. These bureaus employ specialized salespeople and expert convention coordinators who handle the details of recruiting and holding conventions. Organizations that hold annual gatherings rely heavily on these bureaus, which attract huge sums to their communities.

Spokane’s bureau, for the coming year, has helped with conventions and events that will bring 683,965 visitors who will spend $71 million here. The visitors also will pay hotel-motel taxes to fund the bureau, plus millions of dollars in sales taxes that help fund city and county government.

If CVB collapsed, conventions that have made commitments to Spokane would be in trouble. Others would go elsewhere.

Alarmed by signals the City Council might kill its funding, the bureau brought dozens of business owners to last Monday’s council meeting to explain CVB’s value to local jobs and city revenues.

After a few minutes of testimony, Eugster interrupted with an announcement that the council unanimously supported continuing the bureau’s funding. The crowd responded with relieved, grateful and well-earned applause.

That was a big moment. Perhaps it was a discovery of common ground. All successful high-tech regions, from Seattle to Silicon Valley, need and have strong convention services. Spokane’s convention business, which boomed following construction of the Ag Trade Center, has grown more slowly in the last few years. The convention market is shifting to cities with larger facilities - which are, therefore, among Spokane’s economic-development needs.

The challenge for our community is to increase local unity and vigor, in all sectors of the economy, so Spokane will be a stronger competitor in the national market. We hope the council keeps moving in this direction.