While it’s perfectly reasonable for the provincial government to expect some measurable results for money it invests in any initiative, the goal set by the province in 2006 for resort municipalities to double — yes, double — their revenues by 2015 goes well beyond reason due to current economic realities.
Since 2006, the global economy has suffered a tremor or two. Resort towns are more likely to face double the trouble than double the tourists. Now that five years of the program have passed, this seems a reasonable juncture for the province to reassess the objectives it set in rosier economic times.
Instead, they’ve reiterated their demand of doubling tourist accommodation revenue, otherwise the “resort municipality initiative” funding could be revoked.
When CAO Victor Kumar broke the news at Tuesday’s council meeting, councillors, understandably, were a little taken aback.
“An incremental increase is understandable, but doubling seems very unrealistic,” noted Coun. Hanne Smith.
Coun. Jill Spearn, even suggested that the sky-high expectations might be a roundabout way for the province to phase out the program through attrition.
That doesn’t sound too outlandish to us. Maintaining the requirement to double a municipality’s hotel-tax revenue in the coming years of economic uncertainty goes well beyond aggressive. It seems set up to have cities fail. If that is indeed the province’s intent, they’d be better off to simply announce the cancellation of the initiative.
Nevertheless, the exercise in long-term strategic planning is a great benefit to Rossland and other resort towns, even if the provincial initiative is cancelled.
We encourage people interested in revving up Rossland’s tourist economy to attend the planning meeting on May 31 at 7:30 p.m. at the Miners’ Hall.
— Rossland News