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Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Spokane Valley City Council rejects funding plan

The City Council said Spokane Valley events and facilities should receive more money from lodging taxes and rejected Tuesday an advisory committee’s recommendations on how the funds should be allocated.

Under a new state law the council can only accept or reject the funding recommendations, not alter them.

The council gave the Lodging Tax Advisory Committee a set of goals that emphasized that the council wants to spend money on Valley events and organizations, said Councilman Chuck Hafner.

Instead, the committee seems to have focused entirely on hotel/motel room nights, he said.

“If we’re just looking at heads in beds, that’s not what this community is about,” Hafner said.

The committee recommended giving most of the city’s $570,000 to two regional organizations – $256,000 to Visit Spokane and $185,000 to the Spokane Sports Commission. Other recipients included $20,000 to Valleyfest and $15,000 to the Spokane Valley Heritage Museum.

Those allocations don’t match the city’s goals, said Mayor Dean Grafos. “The events that benefit Spokane Valley have in a way been shortchanged,” he said.

Representatives of several local hotels and motels fought back, urging the council to approve the amounts as recommended. Spokane Hotel Motel Association executive director Toni Hansen said it is heads in beds that provides economic impact. “Budgets and plans are depending on this money,” she said.

Julie Cohen, general manager of the Holiday Inn Express Spokane Valley, said 70 percent of the groups in her hotel last year were here for sporting events. “The heads in beds is definitely what replenishes the funds,” she said. “Tourism is about heads in beds.”

Former City Council member Bill Gothmann said he believed the tax funds collected in Spokane Valley should stay in Spokane Valley. The law specifically states that the funding can be used for marketing and community festivals. “Does it say heads and beds only?” he said. “No.”

One of the organizations that submitted a funding request is crying foul over the committee’s work. The committee includes a City Council member, two representatives from the hotel industry and two representatives from organizations eligible to receive funding. This year one of the representatives from the latter group is Keith Backsen of Visit Spokane. The other is Heritage Museum board member Herman Meier.

In a letter to the council earlier this month, the Valleyfest board of directors said that Lee Cameron of the Mirabeau Park Hotel announced during the committee meeting that he and fellow committee member Jeff Fiman of Sterling Hospitality had held a meeting with local hotel, motel and marketing representatives and “gotten their marching orders,” the letter states.

According to the minutes of the lodging tax meeting, Cameron referenced that private meeting several times. He said a decision was reached at that private meeting not to give any funding to the Spokane Valley Heritage Museum, Valleyfest or a proposal to add sand volleyball courts to Browns Park.

Those statements apparently have Valleyfest representatives upset. “So here we are giving a presentation and thinking we have a fair shot when it was already decided,” said Valleyfest director Peggy Doering.

The committee decided to add some money for Valleyfest to the list of recommendations after council member Ben Wick pointed out the City Council likely wouldn’t approve the recommendations if the organization wasn’t included, according to the meeting minutes.

During the lodging tax meeting Fiman stated that Valleyfest doesn’t generate room nights even though the organization had submitted an independent report from Eastern Washington University that said otherwise. The Valleyfest board added an email to the letter it sent the City Council from one of the entertainment groups that performed at the community festival. That group reported renting five rooms for two nights at the Super 8 Motel in Spokane Valley.