Del Fest a true friend????? Really

[HOFFA]

Did anyone else hear the DelFest rep. on WCBC (I think) last week? He seemed to criticizing local law enforcement. He gave an example of how they pulled out of an area, because the local law enforcement basically harassing festival goers.

[Paulie.Walnuts]

No doubt!  It went as far as the Del Fest promoter contacting the Governors Office to pressure the police to turn a blind eye to drugs rolling into this community that weekend.   Even had a County Commissioner stick his nose in the business of the Police doing their jobs.  He should have been locked up for hindering and obstructing law enforcement.   

[JayBee]

No doubt!  It went as far as the Del Fest promoter contacting the Governors Office to pressure the police to turn a blind eye to drugs rolling into this community that weekend.   Even had a County Commissioner stick his nose in the business of the Police doing their jobs.  He should have been locked up for hindering and obstructing law enforcement.   

Really, is there a new 'boss hog' in town?  They really lobbied the Governor to put pressure on local police to allow drug trafficking? 

That sounds like one side of a two-sided coin.

What were the actually facts?

[traci casey]

Ok who wants to be in a joint venture hubby says to make money you would need contacts to big names to bring in big money but yes it could be done and the math is easy to do first decide your head liner and then there follow  up bands could be local bands as well then you ad in security  cost of booze then divide that cost by asking  price for tickets and that will tell your break even point so
say you know how to contacts a country star or something then you take that total dollar amount and find investors and from the break even point on split profit by investors determined by the amount invested easy math  if some one invest one dollar and the return is x percent pay them that... Whose in .....

[illuminati]

It's more complicated than that, JB.  Our tourism program generates income that supports marketing through voluntary cooperative ads purchased in the visitor's guide. Our stakeholders invest over $80,000 annually through us on coop advertising from their own budgets.  We also earn matching grants by using Maryland OTD identities on approved ads (we pioneered adding internet advertising to this program).  Certain grant-based Maryland Heritage Area grant funds are also administered through tourism on a competitive project application basis.  These income sources are added to the county allocation to make the operating budget for the tourism department.

After the two cities pull their share of the hotel/motel revenue, the commissioners have then traditionally paid other expenses from the fund, including trail maintenance and security and various other subsidies to entities like WMSR and the Arts Council, these two totaling $180K in 2012.  Through a bookkeeping choice that goes back the Jerry Frantz era, the county assigns all general fund expenditures above the collected hotel/motel tax to the tourism department, although they could just as easily choose any of the other tourism related line items as being pulled from the general fund. 

In 2012, if I recall correctly, slightly less than $300K of the nearly million hotel/motel dollars collected was actually allocated to the tourism department.  Despite growing the hotel/motel stream between 2002 and 2012 the tourism department team's budget is significantly smaller than in 2007 before the recession.

If tourism funding was based on growth of the tax stream to which we are held to specific mission responsibility our funding would be going up.  It is not.  The chiding we take as resource hogs from the sock puppets here falls into the category of insult after injury as we work our tails off to create increasing results from decreasing resources.  We work a lot harder, care a lot more and accomplish more through innovation than many care to admit for a variety of reasons.

Very Well rehearsed what you and Jaybee got going here!   Kudos!!    Draw up a plan and execute it.   

[JayBee]

It's more complicated than that, JB.  Our tourism program generates income that supports marketing through voluntary cooperative ads purchased in the visitor's guide. Our stakeholders invest over $80,000 annually through us on coop advertising from their own budgets.  We also earn matching grants by using Maryland OTD identities on approved ads (we pioneered adding internet advertising to this program).  Certain grant-based Maryland Heritage Area grant funds are also administered through tourism on a competitive project application basis.  These income sources are added to the county allocation to make the operating budget for the tourism department.

After the two cities pull their share of the hotel/motel revenue, the commissioners have then traditionally paid other expenses from the fund, including trail maintenance and security and various other subsidies to entities like WMSR and the Arts Council, these two totaling $180K in 2012.  Through a bookkeeping choice that goes back the Jerry Frantz era, the county assigns all general fund expenditures above the collected hotel/motel tax to the tourism department, although they could just as easily choose any of the other tourism related line items as being pulled from the general fund. 

In 2012, if I recall correctly, slightly less than $300K of the nearly million hotel/motel dollars collected was actually allocated to the tourism department.  Despite growing the hotel/motel stream between 2002 and 2012 the tourism department team's budget is significantly smaller than in 2007 before the recession.

If tourism funding was based on growth of the tax stream to which we are held to specific mission responsibility our funding would be going up.  It is not.  The chiding we take as resource hogs from the sock puppets here falls into the category of insult after injury as we work our tails off to create increasing results from decreasing resources.  We work a lot harder, care a lot more and accomplish more through innovation than many care to admit for a variety of reasons.

Very Well rehearsed what you and Jaybee got going here!   Kudos!!    Draw up a plan and execute it.

I'm guessing Dave and others may know what you mean there...

I'm putting Dave through a wrath of questioning to obtain information, and some opinion.  These were created soley by me and represent my personal ideas and feelings of pertinance. 

There's still questions.  For instance, Dave hasn't has clearly laid out an implemental proposal for tourism funding - he's only laid out principles as far as I can see. 

To me, gov't budgeting should be justified.  Not based on soley on last year's spending, or arbitrary projections - or accounting gimmicks.  I'm unsure that tourism has done this to what would suffice for me, however I am open to the thought that they could have a quantitatively proven case (and see indications that they may).  I just want to see it - don't count your chickens before they hatch, so to speak. 

Without converting leads/clicks and other tracking data into some kind of dollar figures for the area, the answers to my questions remain incomplete. 

[Dave Williams]

JB, please forgive our chat buddy Illuminati for being grumpy.  He likes it better when people just make snide remarks about each other.  He just HATES it when real questions draw real responses and real discussions result.  Any explanation for the expenditures, activities and programs operated under tourism that are not explained by greed, avarice or dishonesty are simply not acceptable.

The Illuminati Theory requires that anyone allowing anything other than cynical sarcasm to be discussed must colluding with the evil empire.  You are guilty of SOMETHING by chat room conspiracy under the guise of civil discourse, so fess up.

So it goes in Sock Puppet Theater