Silliness or BS?

Readers owe a debt of gratitude to the Board of Directors of the Healdsburg Tourism Improvement District (HTID). We have rarely seen a letter that provided, word for word, greater entertainment value than the board’s response to a letter suggesting that transient tax money should now be reallocated from tourism promotion to low-income housing. We encourage readers to dig through their old papers, or go to the Tribune online, to again enjoy with us this amazing missive.
The first paragraph creates the impression that the board intends to rebut an assertion that the city gives the Chamber of Commerce lots of money to promote tourism. Then it outlines parts of the mechanism whereby the city gives the Chamber of Commerce lots of money to promote tourism.
Apparently, the point of this paragraph is to quibble with the wording of the earlier letter. Perhaps the quibbles are so miniscule and fatuous that it would not serve the board’s purpose to clearly state them, so the reader is left guessing. Is the idea that it’s not the city that gives the money, but rather the hoteliers who levy the tax on their lodgers? The hoteliers are not the source of the money, the lodgers are. Only the city can authorize the levying of such a tax. The city council voted for and created the HTID.
The city has ultimate authority over the spending of the money. In normal language, the city gives the money. Perhaps the quibble is that the board wants us to think that it’s not the chamber who uses the money, it’s the HTID, whose board is administered by the chamber, and which then in turn directs the chamber, which administers and implements the HTID program. Is the paragraph divine silliness or transparent BS? Is the goal to obfuscate or merely to confuse?
There is one aspect of the proposed change to the tax that might be a source of confusion. As it’s set up by law, the existing HTID tax cannot be directly reallocated for another use. The old tax can be ended. A new tax can be enacted. It can be an almost identical tax, levied on the same lodgers, at the same two percent, collected in the same way, but earmarked specifically to aid with a current need – low income housing.
Most of the next paragraph talks about the other tax on lodgers, the Transient Occupancy Tax and the great things that tax does. The TOT is similar to the HTID tax: both are levied by lodging providers on transients and collected in a similar manner.
But they are two different things, and bringing the TOT up as if it has any bearing on the matter at hand would be peculiar, unless the board was hoping to fool readers into thinking a redirection of the HTID tax would cause the TOT tax to also be redirected. I shudder to think that the board might be so deceptive. I prefer to think they are merely muddled, and invite the reader to be similarly generous.
The last paragraph basically says the board feels the pain of renters being displaced, they believe that we can have both thriving tourism and affordable housing and they urge city government to take bold steps to “add housing options.” That they should encourage bold action, in the course of opposing one of the few ideas that is not altogether timid, is great fun, but they do somehow ignore a large elephant in a small living room.
Increasing tourism to diversify our economy was a good idea, but beyond a certain point, which we have clearly passed, promotion of even more tourism starts to narrow the economy. It largely creates low and very low paying jobs, while energetically attracting wealthy investors who buy properties here, driving up housing prices. Increased tourism is making it harder for existing residents, and most new tourism employees, to afford local housing. If the HTID board is serious about encouraging city government to take “creative and bold steps” to provide low-income housing, then they will stop opposing a sensible idea.
— Robert Neuse is a Healdsburg
resident