ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Tuesday, May 14, 1996 TAG: 9605140067
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: S.D. HARRINGTON STAFF WRITER
Salem City Council effectively gave the Roanoke Valley Convention and Visitors Bureau a vote of no confidence Monday night and cut all but $5,000 of the city's annual $25,000 contribution to the bureau.
And tonight council will consider a $50,000 request to create Salem's own visitors center.
In a letter to council, the city's representative on the visitors bureau's board of directors, Carey Harveycutter, questioned the bureau's performance in promoting Salem as a tourist destination. He also questioned its effectiveness in promoting all Roanoke Valley hotels equally.
For the past two years, Salem has given $25,000 to the bureau to help it advertise Salem in valley tourism brochures. But in the letter, Harveycutter suggested council's funding of the bureau "be reduced significantly."
After reading parts Harveycutter's letter aloud, council members said they were not at all happy with what they were getting for the $25,000.
"They're just not doing the job for us," said Councilman Alex Brown. "I don't think our money is well spent there at all."
As an example of council's dissatisfaction, Brown pointed to brochures that were given to council that night by the bureau's executive director, Martha Mackey.
In one brochure promoting Roanoke Valley tourism, Salem wasn't even listed on a map, Brown noted.
"I want to put that money into Salem," said Mayor Jim Taliaferro. "I think we've got to promote ourselves."
Council agreed to give $4,000 to help the visitors' bureau promote the Miss Virginia Pageant and $1,000 for other advertising.
The only member of council who wanted to give the visitors bureau the full $25,000, Howard Packett, said that Salem should chip in to help promote the whole valley.
"When people come to Roanoke, they'll visit Salem," he said. "We do need to do more to promote Salem." But, "$25,000 is not a lot of money to promote a city."
Packett said he believes City Council will fund some type of visitors center in Salem.
Talk of Salem's own visitors center is nothing new. A committee of Salem merchants, which included Harveycutter, studied the idea two years ago and told City Council that one was needed in Salem.
That proposal was never included in the city's budget.
So far this year, the city has received two proposals for a visitors center in Salem.
About a month ago, Harveycutter requested $25,000 from council so the Salem Civic Center could act as a "quasi-visitors center" with an information kiosk.
Tonight, members of the Salem Merchants Association will ask council for up to $50,000 for a visitors center closer to the downtown historic district.
The civic center "is not adjacent to the business district, restaurants, shops and antique stores at the heart of Salem," the proposal said.
Mackey, the Roanoke Valley visitors bureau's executive director, said she does not see a visitors center in Salem as a conflict with the bureau.
The visitors bureau operates a visitors center on the Roanoke City Market. Mackey said if a visitors center were created in Salem, the two centers should cooperate.
Mackey left the meeting before council decided to reduce its funding and said she could not comment on any speculation that they would do so.
Harveycutter listed several problems in his letter, including the lack of exposure the Salem Civic Center has had to people planning meetings or conventions.
Of 16 meeting and convention planners hosted by the valley visitors bureau this year, Harveycutter said, only one visited the Salem Civic Center.
And one "planner was considering the Roanoke Valley for their convention and was not even informed that there was a second civic center in the valley by members of the [bureau's] sales staff," Harveycutter said in the letter.
Harveycutter also said he and managers from four of the valley's hotels have had a "lack of trust" in the bureau's executive director Martha Mackey and director of sales Kelly Burd-Adams in promoting all of the valley's hotels.
In other action, City Council voted to give $3,600 to the the Roanoke Valley Greenways/Open Space Steering Committee - the amount it gave last year.
$7,200 to the Roanoke Valley Greenways/Open Space Steering Committee to fund its share of a Greenways Coordinator.
Lucy Ellett, the committee's chairwoman, said a paid coordinator would be needed to plan greenway activities.
Council instead agreed to give $3,600 to the greenways committee - the amount it gave last year.
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