As election time draws closer and candidates for local office begin to identify their platforms, the Long Beach Peninsula Visitors Bureaus Executive Committee thinks it is important to clarify the agencys relationship to this community. 

The bureau is proud to represent this area and uses lodging tax dollars to keep its doors open, the phones operating, the funbeach website functioning, and our public relations program aggressively working with a wide variety of magazine writers, radio and TV producers, bloggers and more!

These dollars are generated entirely by our visitors as part of the tax they pay when they rent a room or an RV site. That money called lodging tax is used solely for the purpose of promoting tourism and is strictly governed by state RCWs. These funds cannot be used by a city or county to pay other operational costs, such as maintaining water reservoirs, for example. 

Certain information is being tossed around questioning why the city of Long Beach provides so much more lodging tax money to the Visitors Bureau than Ilwaco does. 

To answer this question, we simply need to look at the number of lodging units in each city. Lets use hotel rooms as an example. Within Ilwaco city limits, there are 74 currently operating hotel rooms (16 are in a hotel which only opens seasonally) while there are 556 rooms inside the boundaries of Long Beach (WorldMark rooms are not included in this count). This means that Long Beach has nearly seven and one-half rooms for every one Ilwaco has! 

Long Beach, Ilwaco and Pacific County have long recognized and supported the bureaus work by providing lodging tax dollars. During 2010, Pacific County provided a total of $120,700; Ilwacos contribution was $15,000; and the city of Long Beach provided $157,500. 

It is important to note that 40 percent of these dollars were used for special projects, such as radio ads or advertising in the states visitor guide, and were not given to the Bureau to pay regular day-to-day operations.

Lastly, with regard to any discussion of conflict of interest issues tossed out as campaign rhetoric, candidates need to better understand the facts. At a widely attended 1999 community tourism summit, participants voted unanimously to designate the Visitors Bureau as the organizational umbrella for collaborative and coordinated tourism marketing efforts for the area.  Following the model of other umbrella visitor bureaus in this state, the Long Beach Peninsula Visitors Bureau provides a position on its board of directors for each of its funders and major stakeholders.

We thank and applaud everyone who selflessly gives of their limited personal time to help keep things going from year to year.

LBPVB Executive Committee

Randy Dennis, Lorna Follis, Susie Goldsmith, Nancy Gorshe, Sue Madsen