SEQUIM — Among the latest targets in an ongoing campaign for change: the city of Sequim’s $11,000 tourism coordinator contract.
For almost a year now, Sequim City Council members Erik Erichsen and Ken Hays have agitated for alterations in the status quo.
And during Monday’s study session, the council will discuss whether and how to find a new contractor to tell the world about this neck of the woods.
The meeting will begin at 9 a.m. in the Transit Center at 190 W. Cedar St.
Earlier this month, Erichsen called for the issuance of a request for proposals, which could produce a replacement for Patricia McCauley and InsideOut Solutions, the Sequim company that has held the tourism promotion contract for a decade.
InsideOut’s contract expires Dec. 31, and that presents “an opportunity for someone to do it different and better,” Erichsen said at last Monday’s council meeting.
Hays agreed that the city should create incentives for contractors beyond Sequim “to work as hard as they can for us, and be as fresh in their thinking as they possibly can. Frankly, I don’t think we’ve been getting much for our money,” he said, adding that a promoter should develop ecotourism and agritourism in this outdoorsy, farm-rich part of the country.
Challenges idea
Longtime council member Paul McHugh challenged Erichsen and Hays, asking if they thought a tourism consultant from outside Sequim could possibly do this place justice.
Erichsen simply said yes, while Hays shot back, “I think you’re trying to poke somebody in the eye here.”
“I am,” McHugh replied. “Very perceptive.”
Hays repeated that the request for proposals should be opened beyond the region.
“And I will not respond,” Erichsen said.
McCauley, for her part, called the idea of hiring a contractor from elsewhere “odd.”
She’s lived here 25 years and said she’s well-acquainted with the Dungeness Valley’s “niche market.”
The top three reasons vacationers come here, McCauley said, are the weather, the lavender and the Dungeness Spit, which promises miles of beach walking amid wildlife, plus the 151-year-old Dungeness Lighthouse.
McCauley said InsideOut Solutions has a 12-member staff, and contracts including the Minnesota, Montana and Wisconsin bed and breakfast associations.
So don’t those contracts mean that a firm can do a good job promoting a faraway destination?
Sure, said McCauley. But she believes that for the $11,000 that Sequim is prepared to pay a consultant, it wouldn’t be easy.
She added that she wishes Erichsen had raised his concern three or more months ago, and not just before InsideOut’s contract is due to expire.
Request for proposals
The City Council is expected to issue its request for proposals from tourism promoters soon after Monday’s study session.
The promoter’s contract would begin March 1, so the council must decide whether to extend InsideOut’s agreement through Feb. 28 or forgo tourism promotion for two months.
Last Monday night, the council voted 5-2 to adopt the city’s 2009 budget, which includes other tourism-promotion funding in the form of $52,000 for the Visitor Information Center run by the Sequim-Dungeness Valley Chamber of Commerce.
Erichsen and council member Susan Lorenzen were the naysayers, who felt the budget supplied too much funding to “outside” agencies such as the Boys & Girls Clubs of the Olympic Peninsula and the Clallam County Economic Development Council.
Erichsen added that he didn’t believe the Visitor Information Center earns its keep, since what he sees when he passes the center at 1192 E. Washington St. is the miniature model of the Dungeness Lighthouse.
The real lighthouse lies outside the city limit, Erichsen noted.
Traffic has slowed this month at the center; by noon last Wednesday just five people had stopped in.
But chamber director Vickie Maples said this season’s numbers haven’t dipped much considering the country’s economic woes.
The center saw 822 visitors in November, a slight decrease from 2007’s 856 during the same month. In October, 1,407 people came in, representing an increase of 142 over last year.
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Sequim-Dungeness Valley Editor Diane Urbani de la Paz can be reached at 360-681-2391 or at diane.urbani@peninsuladailynews.com.
