CHRISTIANSBURG -- Town Council members who have gone back and forth on whether to withdraw from a joint tourism program sat down Wednesday to continue hashing out what the town wants.
"My goal was never to get rid of tourism but to make tourism work for Christiansburg," Councilman Tim Wilson said.
Town council members wound up a nearly two-hour work session asking Town Manager Randy Wingfield to draw up a possible new contract with Montgomery County and Blacksburg for the joint tourism program, and to ask the tourism program's interim director, Deputy County Administrator Chris Lawrence, for a presentation about the tourism effort - and to continue council's deliberations at future meetings.
Most of the council members sounded more positive about a cooperative tourism effort than comments aired at sessions last month.
"Less cooperation is the opposite of where we need to be headed," Vice Mayor Tanya Hockett said.
Christiansburg's participation in the three-locality tourism program has irked some Christiansburg council members for years. Dissatisfaction flared anew last month, seemingly sparked by a presentation from a consultant who had completed a marketing campaign for the joint program and wanted to tell the town about it - and to urge council to stay involved in a cooperative approach.
Council members replied that they had given the joint program a year's notice that the town was leaving.
At that council meeting and two others in August, Christiansburg officials said that for at least the last several years, the town was not properly represented in materials that the joint program prepared. Councilwoman Johana Hicks said that the town should immediately stop payments to the joint program, an amount that is estimated to be $179,000 in the present fiscal year.
Last month, council voted 4-2 against Hicks' motion for an immediate exit, overcoming Hicks and Kim Bowman's votes.
On Wednesday, after long discussion, Hicks said that she wanted to challenge council members to come up with lists of tourism goals.
Wilson said council members should already have their ideas together. "That's what tonight was about," Wilson said.
Hicks said that she'd like to give $60,000 or so to town staff such as Aquatics Director Terry Caldwell, Parks and Recreation Director Brad Epperley, and Public Relations Director Christina Bolt, to see what they could do to boost tourism.
Bolt said that she would need to spend a lot of time away from her other duties educating herself about how to effectively carry out tourism marketing.
"If you would want to move tourism into my department ... then I will figure that out," Bolt said. "... I don't feel like it falls under PR as naturally as it is sounding right now."
Mayor Mike Barber said that council should not abruptly add duties to department heads' jobs. Hicks replied that she wanted the staff opinions.
"You've made that point a hundred times," Barber said.
Barber began the meeting by saying that he, Bolt and Lawrence met recently with representatives of the state tourism council. Bolt then made a long presentation of information relayed from the tourism council, including that visitors to Montgomery County are credited with spending $276 million in the county in 2022 and $279.6 million in 2023.
Bolt said that the state information did not break down how much of that spending was in either of the county's two towns or the county itself, but council members said that even if Christiansburg was receiving just a fraction of the total, it was a great return on investment for the money sent to the tourism effort.
The tourism effort is paid for through a portion of the lodging tax collected in each locality.
Hicks and Bowman said the money was not being well-used, and Barber said that it was better to have out-of-town visitors paying for tourism marketing than the town's own taxpayers.
Bolt said that after the talk with the tourism council representatives, town staff drew up a list of possible issues related to the joint program. A key point was that Blacksburg and Montgomery County were positioned to benefit from outdoor recreation-related tourism, but Christiansburg, which hosts numerous sports tournaments at its aquatic center and playing fields, was geared toward drawing sports-related visitors.
"We have separate needs but we can both reap mutual benefits," Bolt said of the joint tourism program.
Other comments Wednesday included Councilman Sam Bishop saying that the town's biggest problem with the tourism effort was a lack of communication with its recently retired director, David Rotenizer. Bishop is one of Christiansburg's representatives to the tourism effort and is in his second consecutive term as chairman of the tourism program's advisory council.
"Yes, I had a heartburn with the tourism department," Bishop said, adding that he would like the tourism office to come before council every few months to give an update.
Councilman Casey Jenkins said that besides all the spending by visitors to the town, Christiansburg could now receive geo-fencing information through the tourism program that tracked how many people went to various attractions.
Barber noted the software vendors who hope to sell cellphone-tracking programs to the town had let Christiansburg use the software during a recent large soccer tournament. The town was able to tell that 7,450 people from the tournament went to the town's Huckleberry Park, and to get figures for various restaurants that were visited.
"It's an awful lot of Big Brother but at this point in time, we need to know that," Barber said.
Mike Gangloff (540) 381-1669
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