Rich Civic Times
RANDOLPH, Utah.
November 6, 2019. Tami Leonhart, Director of the Bear Lake Convention
and Visitors Bureau Grant, gave commissioners the applications for the TRT tourism
grants with the recommendations of the advisory board.
There were $918,000 in requests this year but Leonhart
believes that only $580,000 will be available to grant. She sends out application forms to all cities in the county, other
organizations, and the Chamber.
However, a lot of the returned applications were not complete. There were no explanations, or spread sheets of where
the money will be spent.
She said that
Randolph City wants to replace trees at a cost of $5,000. The Ball Park in
Garden City and the Bike Path were funded.
Commissioner Bill Cox said the legislature is considering more
flexibility in the use of these funds for rural areas. Rich County actually does not need more
advertising for people to come to the area as there are tens of thousands of
people here each summer. We need
infrastructure to accommodate these visitors. Right now only 1/3 of the TRT tax
can be used for bricks and mortar.
This year the revenue from restaurant tax was 20% down. However
the final report of tax revenues will be done in February when all the data is
in.
Fireworks were not in guidelines the board recommended. Salary and benefits for staff comes from this
tax revenue as was all advertising and funding for Bear River Heritage.
“We do not advertise in the summer, just in the off season,”
said Leonhart. “January and February were fabulous this year.”
Leonhart is going to do an audit of who is paying the TRT
and the Restaurant tax. Cox said that he
feels there is not enough enforcement. There
was no explanation for the decrease since this summer was very busy said
Leonhart. June revenue was down,
probably due to the cold weather. January,
February, March and April revenues were up.
No comments:
Post a Comment