||| FROM MICHAEL ‘MJ’ JOHNSON |||
For the Public Record– About those San Juan Islands Visitors Bureau Destination Marketing Plan public comments.
The public comment period for the San Juan Islands Visitors Bureau’s (SJIVB) Destination Management Plan (DMP) closed in December of last year, (after being extended from the initial deadline of Oct. 31), and are now nearly 6 months overdue in their being made available for public viewing. The long overdue public comments related to the SJIVB tourism management plan are now scheduled for release during the upcoming July 8 county council meeting.
When it rains it pours… while all eyes are fixated upon our local fire department and our local water association’s ongoing fiascos, in a last minute backdoor attempt to garner more support for the DMP San Juan County (via the SJIVB) has embarked upon a campaign in an effort to add more positive comments by reopening the comment period to only the business sector of SJC.
In the letter sent to their constituents dated June 28, the SJIVB stated, “Dear Members, The County Council will soon be reviewing 900+ public comments to the San Juan Islands Destination Management Plan. There were very few comments received from the business community, while there were many comments received against destination marketing. We would like to submit the following letter on behalf of you, our members, to the County Council, for the public record, with your support. Please read the letter below, then press REPLY to let us know you support the letter, and please include your name and business name for a list of signers, by NOON, July 2. Thank you!!”
So much for the term, or for the spirit of, “Public comments”. As a friend of mine framed it, “Why did they ask for our comments, if they’re just going to ignore what we said and put words into the mouths of those who didn’t bother to respond, in a way that bolsters their own position? Classy.”
What we’ve been seeing at the hands of the San Juan Islands Visitors Bureau is a marketing strategy targeting the Seattle area that is reliant upon mass tourism, (“boots on the ground” as they call it). Mass tourism of this nature is high volume low value tourism that primarily encourages day trippers (the bottom of the barrel in terms of tourism), while creating a nightmare scenario of forever tourism infrastructure needs and maintenance, (including a local utility infrastructure that’s built and maintained to accommodate tens of thousand of people at peak periods that is primarily funded by SJC taxpayers), while relying on more and more numbers of annual visitors in order to make it profitable.
Current tactics employed by the Visitor’s Bureau include “seasonality,” (concentrating their marketing on more tourism during our buffer seasons), “dispersion,” (concentrating their marketing efforts on our lesser known areas, you know, our special spots, which also includes small, secluded, sensitive bays for the boating crowd), and more recently, as there is no housing available for workers, is their proposal to allow “renegade camping,” (allowing seasonal workers to camp in their vans and campers at county road ends, and behind the school and the fire station). Nor, as it should be noted, is there any available housing for low to middle income full-time residents, with this being symptomatic of both a failed long-term rental market, and an affordable housing market as a result of SJC’s tourism related growth policies- policies which traditionally encourage (both legal and illegal) short-term vacation rentals, second homes, and unlimited numbers of annual events and corporate conventions (unlimited in numbers, size, and duration), with a resultant over-reliance upon an ever-increasing tax base and federal & state subsidies.
To the residents of San Juan County it’s already an uneven playing field. Just because the Visitors Bureau received an overwhelming number of comments during the lengthy and well-publicized public comment period with the public overwhelmingly stating that they wanted them to stop over-marketing the San Juans (sound familiar?), should not be a valid catalyst, at such a late stage of the game, for the county to try and leverage the system by reopening the comment period and soliciting for more (positive) comments, this time “targeting only the business sector of the San Juans,” with the urgent message that they need to act now in order to offset the number of comments that they received that were critical of the DMP. The business sector of San Juan County, being residents as they are, had ample opportunity to comment during the lengthy public comment period (remember, it was even extended)… just like the rest of us. Assuming that many of the business owners already commented during the public comment period does this then give those in the business sector the opportunity to have their comments counted twice?
Again, the call for public comments in relation to the DMP were highly publicized locally, and, if you recall, a month or so into the comment period articles soliciting for more comments were also printed in the Seattle Times, the Salish Current, and other Washington media outlets in an attempt to garner supportive comments from (the readership thereof) of non-resident tourists. What’s next? Will the Visitors Bureau be asking the same from our Chamber of Commerce? Of course they will. Will they, once again, be submitting articles to outside news sources, and also soliciting for comments from the Visitors Bureaus and the Chambers of Commerce from Seattle and Bellingham?
I’ve already written my letters to both the Visitor’s Bureau, and to the County Council ( Cindy Wolf cindyw@sanjuanco.com , Jane Fuller janef@sanjuanco.com , Christine Minney christinem@sanjuanco.com), asking them, that in view of the fact that the public comment period was closed 6 months ago, to not allow any more comments to be added at this time. As a better person than myself outlined after reading their letter, “tourism erodes community and the health of natural assets, while providing jobs (the argument for) in positions that can never rise higher, creating a permanent underclass, to the benefit of those who profit from keeping it that way. The people you represent deserve better than this.” Yes, we deserve better… we deserve “smart growth” and “responsible tourism,” (that which will ensure that each of these will remain within parameters that respect the health of our environment, our ecological systems, and our community’s well-being), not more cheesy marketing tactics like this which are designed to do just the opposite.
How ’bout from this point on, in San Juan County, we host public surveys and public comment periods that don’t divide the public sector from the business sector? How ’bout we just have public surveys and public comments that reflect the opinions of all of the people in the county equally.
Opening the public comments period to only part of the public is just bizarre.
Thank you, MJ. Thea, I agree! It seems completely inappropriate and bizarre for them to do this.
It disturbs me greatly how marketing has begun to replace truth and evidence in these islands.
It’s time to replace the Visitor’s Bureau with a “Resident’s Quality of Life Bureau” that includes both human and non-human communities.
This is really sad, disappointing and inappropriate. Seems my voice isn’t worth as much.
“What’s next? Will the Visitors Bureau be asking the same from our Chamber of Commerce? Of course they will. “
MJ, I believe that all county Chamber Executive Directors sit on the SJIVB’s Board.
Look, it’s simple, I just want to find 11,780 votes.
Sound familiar?
The document is about 80 pages of Tourism. And, then the last seven are a TED Talk on how to tax if you were William the Conquorer, writing a new Doomsday Book.
It was DOA from the beginning. With 900 comments to prove it.
It’s legislation that will never be fully enforceable. And, opens the county up for additional law suits. On top of the many that have already been accrued.
I’d like to offer a small bit of perspective and information regarding this issue, as I was in attendance at the most recent San Juan County Council meeting where the discussion of the report surrounding the Destination Management Plan was raised and the request for it to be presented to Council was asked for. While I am not affiliated with any part of this plan (I did comment critically on it during the original public process), I think it is important to make clear the current status.
The Destination Management Plan was/is not a plan generated by the San Juan County Islands Visitors Bureau. The DM Plan was initiated through the LTAC committee and the work on assembling the draft that was made public was placed upon the Environmental Stewardship Department to execute. The SJIVB is an independent organization that serves our tourism community and is not part of the County. That draft that was presented was put out before the public not as a policy, but very much as a draft. The comment period yielded a TON of responses – so many and so intensely negative that it was essentially set aside for a period after closing the comment time. At the meeting last month, Council requested that the department wrap that draft review and comment process up and bring a report of the findings to the Council. The work required to make that happen is not easy or pleasant for anyone involved, but is necessary to bring some closure to everyone involved.
The call for comments by the San Juan Islands Visitors Bureau to their membership is not a “reopening” of public comment. They do not have standing with this report to do that. They, like any private citizen or business have every right to make public comment at a Council meeting and as a member-driven advocacy group have the right to alert their membership to issues that may be of interest. They are doing just that. Similarly, everyone who also has concerns regarding this issue may speak on that date. Those comments will not be part of the report or of the findings of that report, but serve as public input to the Council more generally.
While I am not in the room where the results of this process are being assembled, I know that the staff working on it is doing their absolute best to present an honest and transparent depiction of the results. I also know that because of the resounding response to this process, properly presenting the results has not been easy and has eaten up time well beyond what was budgeted for the work. My assumption is that what we receive at the 7/8 meeting will be a package of information that represents the voice of our community – which I’m guessing will reflect many of the concerns stated in this comment section.
Thank you, Justin for providing clarity and background to this situation. Your voice is always appreciated.
Disturbing, disappointing, and depressing — but not surprising.
Instead of debating and discussing whether the Visitors Bureau should be able to do this or that, why aren’t we talking about shutting them down?
We live in a democracy — in theory. And despite not being a government entity, they are funded in part with tax dollars.
How about a ballot initiative to DEFUND the San Juan Islands Visitors Bureau?
The secret is out, social media allows random tourists to “market” this place to their friends and family already.
We shouldn’t be spending our tax dollars to make a bad problem even worse.
Local businesses can pay for their own marketing, instead of taking advantage of this “public sector to private sector” wealth transfer.
There’s hardly a person on this island who wants more tourists, more traffic, more noise.
Let’s put this to a vote and allow residents to decide whether the Visitors Bureau should continue to be funded by our tax dollars.
I like your thinking, David Bowman! Why does everyone constantly forget there is a water issue in San Juan Island— year-round— and the tourist season does not help whatsoever!!
Background, yes. Clarity, no.
The San Juan Islands Visitors Bureau is under contract, hired by San Juan County to manage destination marketing (i.e. tourism).
The DMP was funded through LTAC funds, and was drafted with input from many different county & non-county participants, including the Visitors Bureau, the Land Bank, the county Environmental Stewardship Dept., and three different private companies that were hired under contract to do research and consultant work among them.
To say that the Visitors Bureau is an independent organization that serves our tourism community and is not part of the County when it was hired by the county, though politically correct, is also a bit misleading in context to the larger issue. San Juan County suffers from the limitations offered by a dominant dual-engine economy- tourism, and taxes derived from tourism related development, and it suffers from a multitude of problems as a result. The Visitors Bureau is the driving entity by which SJC runs the tourism machine, and as a result the tail is now wagging the dog… it’s not difficult to see where this is leading us as we head into the future.
The Visitors Bureau is on a year-to-year contract with San Juan County. It’s time, IMO, that San Juan County listen to the people, and in an effort to get a better grip on tourism marketing, dissolve the Visitors Bureau, better fund our county’s enforcement dept. (illegal vacation rentals), the Economic Development Council, our climate change response challenges, and lobby the state to allow us to utilize the LTAC funds in a manner that prioritizes community well-being and our environment over economy.
I agree with Elisabeth Robson when she says, “It’s time to replace the Visitor’s Bureau with a “Resident’s Quality of Life Bureau” that includes both human and non-human communities.”
Michael, correct comments about the Visitors Bureau being a creature of the County, funded by the County’s Lodging Tax. One correction, however: the Land Bank had no involvement whatsoever in the Destination Marketing Plan (sic).
Brian, respectfully, and as you know, I fully support the Land Bank and it’s mission. And, in the manner that you intend your comment you are correct, “the Land Bank had no involvement whatsoever in the Destination Marketing Plan.” As a board member I don’t blame you for wanting to distance yourself from the county’s tourism Destination Management Plan. But, as we both know, even though it was not a guiding element, the Ross Report was a major inclusion in the Destination Management Plan. I believe it was originally included as an appendice, as were other surveys and reports from the outside hired consultants.
To further this, though complicated, when one puts the pieces together it’s easy to understand the larger picture and where it’s taking us.
Governing bodies everywhere operate by the concept of compartmentalization. This creating a separation between the leadership and other departments, a separation which conveniently enables them at one moment to take credit for their involvement in an issue, while at other times denying any involvement in it. The excuse that “we didn’t do that,” or, “that’s the other department’s job so you’ll have to contact so and so on that matter,” becomes, over time, nothing more than well-worn phrasing that hosts little meaning to those who deserve better but continually get less. It’s called “plausible deniability.”
“Plausible deniability is the ability of people, typically senior officials in a formal or informal chain of command, to deny knowledge of or responsibility for actions committed by or on behalf of members of their organizational hierarchy.” Wikipedia
The current tactic being employed by the Visitors Bureau engaging “their membership” in a last ditch effort to lobby local leaders in their decision making in regards to the very unpopular tourism Destination Management Plan is more than just “bizarre.” I feel that it’s a perversion of that which they are mandated to do. I put this effort right up there with their past advice to their readership, to, “Be sure and vote on every device you have once a day everyday so that we can be named as one of the top 10 destination resorts in the nation, and “Be sure and get extra ferry reservations for your friends and family while you’re on the phone because they fill up fast,” and their recent campaign of, “Getting here is half the fun,” this being done at a time when the average resident is having trouble making their mainland doctors appointments.
IMO, the Visitors Bureau’s continued any means to an end approach in promoting tourism in the San Juans , (and by default, tourism related development), comes at great expense to our island community’s long-term well-being.
It seems that the county, by way of their Visitors Bureau, is stepping beyond any margin of what could be considered “marketing tourism,” and that the county has, over time, allowed an outside entity to evolve into a political lobbying machine that holds an immense amount of sway in local politics. Having members of the boards of local county and non-county entities such as our Chambers of Commerce (one of the directors of which is also the editor and publisher of our local paper) and the Visitors Bureau, interfacing with other county guiding entities (including our county advisory groups), while also seemingly being on the revolving door of the Friday Harbor Port Commission, the Friday Harbor Town Council, the LTAC committee, the Salish Current, and the SJC Environmental Stewardship Dept. has effectively tipped the scales against the overwhelming sentiment being expressed by the majority resident population, and makes for an interesting composite, when, in the appearance of fairness, the county puts together a study group composed of all stakeholders while engaging in issues that are relative to future growth, tourism, and our environment. And we get it… it’s the norm. It’s the way things are done… did I mention that it was an uneven playing field?
San Juan County Council– “Let’s see, let’s put together a study group to help us determine if there’s a relationship between tourism and climate change… a non-biased group that includes all of the stakeholders. Let’s include members from the Visitors Bureau, the Chambers of Commerce, the Town of Friday Harbor, the Port Commission, the Fisheries, the DNR, the building trades group, the local realtors, the lodging community, the tribal governments, and oh yeah, let’s have someone from our Dept. of Environmental Stewardship (but then, I repeat myself), and also a member of the public.” The more things change, the more they stay the same.
As the Visitors Bureau has been contracted by San Juan County to serve as its tourism marketing organization, I have to ask, “is it actually in the Visitors Bureau’s mandate, (their contract) to organize and operate a political lobby that is being used in an attempt to influence local government decision making in the creation of policies that are critical to the long-term health and well-being of our communities?”
In this regard, one has to wonder how well do the actions of the Visitors Bureau, (and by default, the county), serve the county’s vision statement?