Can’t We All Just Get Along

They said it couldn’t be done.

When the Door County Strategic Marketing Coalition began their effort to sell peninsula municipalities on the idea of forming a tourism zone to collect a 5.5 percent room tax to fund tourism promotion, most people thought the idea was a non-starter. After all, getting the county’s 18 municipalities on the same page on any subject has never proved easy, and doing so to promote an industry whose importance was long undervalued by municipal leaders seemed as absurd as the Green Bay Packers trading Brett Favre…

But a year and dozens of meetings later, ten communities were on board, forming the Door County Tourism Zone Commission (TZC), and in May of 2007 collections began. Within months, two more municipalities joined the zone, eager to be a part of the revamped marketing efforts of the Door County Visitor Bureau (DCVB), (and with an eye on the 30 percent of collections each municipality gets to spend as they wish).

While that represented quite an accomplishment, it left a giant hole in the middle of the room – Sturgeon Bay, the county seat, was not a member of the zone.

The city had enacted its own 4 percent room tax a decade earlier to supplement the city budget and fund the Sturgeon Bay Visitor Center (SBVC). Many in the city saw little need to join the tourism zone, and efforts to do so were halting at best until the TZC, which disperses room tax dollars to the DCVB, made a startling decision in August.

The Sturgeon Bay Common Council voted in July to table discussion of joining the zone for a year, a delay the TZC deemed untenable. After more than a year of including non-zone communities in marketing efforts paid for with zone dollars, the commission instructed the DCVB to spend room tax dollars in strict accordance with state ordinance, which meant non-zone communities and the businesses in those communities could not be included in marketing efforts as of January 1, 2009.

“Last year we were still trying to organize and it seemed fair to allow communities a little time to determine if they wanted to join the zone,” TZC chairman Bob Kufrin said at the time. “But now we’re established, and there’s no reason not to follow the statute as defined by the state.”

This caused a stir among city business owners, especially innkeepers, who said they were heavily reliant on DCVB Web referrals for bookings and visibility. At first the SBVC and city moved slow, claiming it would take at least another year to get the pieces in place for the city to join.

“The meeting when we tabled discussion for the next year probably sent the wrong signal,” Sturgeon Bay Mayor Tom Voegele said after the TZC decision. “Maybe we need to be pushed along a little.”

And pushed they were. The voice of the business community grew louder, calling on leaders to put animosities aside and get a deal done. Only a few weeks after a one-year timetable was proposed, the principals from the city, DCVB, SBVC, and TZC finally sat down to see what could be done. Within weeks, an outline for an agreement that would bring the city into the zone and provide transitional funding for the SBVC was reached, proving once again the power of communication and compromise.

Sturgeon Bay is expected to generate more than $300,000 annually for the DCVB’s marketing efforts with a 5.5 percent room tax. To help the SBVC survive, the bureau decided to collect the city’s room tax dollars and designate them for dispersal back to the 18 municipalities in the zone for individual community marketing. The money will be dispersed in proportion to each community’s room tax collections. For example, if a community’s room tax collection represented 15 percent of the zone’s total collections in 2007, it will receive 15 percent of the room tax dollars collected in Sturgeon Bay.

While the city hashed out a plan, the remaining five county municipalities that were not yet members took steps toward joining the zone. On Jan. 1, 2009, all 18 county municipalities are expected to be part of the Door County Tourism Zone.

And they said it couldn’t be done, but they said the Packers would never trade Brett Favre either.