Councillors on Sechelt’s finance committee still have a lot of questions about funding for Sunshine Coast Tourism (SCT) now that the destination marketing agency benefits from an accommodation tax.
SCT is still waiting for a final decision on its request for $12,800 as the District of Sechelt’s share of the $81,000 total it gets from the six local governments in the Powell River and Sunshine Coast region.
In a July 23 letter to the district, SCT executive director Paul Kamon noted that the provincial guidelines for the tax state that “funds from the tax (MRDT) are intended to augment current funding and cannot be used to replace existing sources of tourism funding in a community.”
When the request came to the finance committee for consideration Aug. 8, Coun. Darnelda Siegers wondered if the room tax would be increasing from its current two per cent to the four per cent levied in many other parts of the province.
She also asked when or if the district could reduce its contribution as SCT gets more funding from other sources. “We actually increased support for them over the years because they didn’t qualify for the MRDT, and now we’re basically locking into that amount because we were supporting them when they were unsuccessful.”
Mayor Bruce Milne said although the local governments recognize that they have to provide funding, he’d like to look into doing it through the Sunshine Coast Regional Economic Development Organization (SCREDO).
“If we’re funding all of our economic development activities through SCREDO, and this is an important element in that economic initiative, then that is where the funds would flow. It would still be local government funding, but it would flow through SCREDO,” he said. “However, all of the other local governments have continued with their individualized portions, so we’re going to have to do that again this year.”
SCT is already working with SCREDO on several tourism projects.
Milne also said that, like the 2017 contribution, it should be marked as one-time funding with the idea of getting feedback on other options before 2019’s funding is due.
The committee voted unanimously to recommend approval to council.
Because of the late timing of dealing with the request, the money would come from the district’s budgeted surplus, reducing it from $123,650 to $110,850.
