SEQUIM — In its continuing quest for someone who will lodge unprecedented numbers of “heads in beds,” the city of Sequim has at last seen several would-be applicants.
A roomful of people responded to an invitation last Thursday to a special meeting of the Sequim Marketing Action Committee, which has been searching since last spring for a tourism coordinator.
The coordinator, a consultant to be paid up to $18,000 depending on qualifications, will be charged with bringing travelers here to spend their money on Olympic Coast cuisine, Olympic Mountain outings, the spring Irrigation Festival and summer Lavender Festival — and, of course, hotel and motel rooms.
That’s where the heads-in-beds term comes from — and it’s where the funding for the tourism coordinator comes from.
Pays expenses
Sequim’s 4 percent tax on lodging providers pays the contractor’s salary and supplies a budget of about $53,000 for promotional materials and grants to local groups.
The group of potential applicants who attended the special meeting was a diverse one.
Author, artist and longtime Sequim resident Linda Silvas; lavender farmer and former advertising professional Magdalena Bassett; Sequim First activist and environmentalist Andrew Shogren; Terry Stolz of Port Angeles; singer-songwriter Kate Lily Souza; Olympic Peninsula Audubon Society board member and former sales professional Sara Ellen Case; and former Sequim-Dungeness Valley Chamber of Commerce director Marny Hannan were among those who came with questions about the city’s request for proposals.
The request for proposals is available to view on the city’s Web site, www.ci.Sequim.wa.us.
‘New thinking’
“How much room is there for new thinking?” asked one man who asked that his name not be given.
“If you’re happy with the way things are being done,” he said, it seems “you’re just looking for someone to coordinate.”
Diane Schostak, executive director of the Olympic Peninsula Visitor Bureau and a member of the Sequim marketing committee, said she wants a coordinator and then some.
“We’re looking to be wowed,” Schostak said. She wants someone with fresh thinking, to “grow the Sequim product.”
But much of the coordinator’s budget is already spoken for.
For the updated travel planner — a glossy brochure promoting Sequim-area activities and accommodations — $14,000 is earmarked, and $4,300 will be spent on distribution of the brochures on Washington state ferries.
An additional $5,000 is for “tourism enhancement grants” to organizations holding events that attract travelers to Sequim.
But there’s $11,500 that’s “not allocated to any specific project,” said Vickie Maples, executive director of the Sequim-Dungeness Valley Chamber of Commerce and a member of the Sequim marketing committee.
Lily Souza, after listening to all of this, asked: “What if I submit some great ideas, and you choose another candidate? What happens to those ideas?”
Intellectual property
Might the Sequim marketing committee run with them after rejecting the applicant, or would they be the intellectual property of that applicant?
Erik Erichsen, the Sequim City Council member who runs the marketing committee meetings, didn’t know the answer.
“I’d have to defer to our lawyer, who’s not here,” he said.
Sequim City Attorney Craig Ritchie later said such ideas in an application “would not be proprietary and could not be protected.”
Another part of the tourism coordinator’s job, Erichsen added, will be developing a strategic plan for promoting Sequim well into the future.
The marketing committee has put that project on hold as it sought a coordinator, he said.
The job has been open since May 1, after Patricia McCauley retired from it after 10 years.
Maples performed the tourism-coordinator duties from May through December, but the chamber board of directors decided she should now be devoting herself to the already busy job of chamber chief.
After the Jan. 22 deadline for proposals from applicants, the marketing committee plans to conduct interviews, and recommend its chosen candidate to the Sequim City Council next month.
March selection
The council is expected to approve and hire a new tourism coordinator by early March.
For information about submitting a proposal, phone City Clerk Karen Kuznek-Reese at 360-683-4139.
Proposals should be mailed or delivered to City Hall, 152 W. Cedar St., Sequim, WA 98382 by 4 p.m. Jan. 22.
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Sequim-Dungeness Valley Reporter Diane Urbani de la Paz can be reached at 360-681-2391 or at diane.urbani@peninsuladaily news.com.
