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Wednesday, January 26, 2011

Current Watch: "City of Glenwood Springs City Council, Tourism Marketing Contract 2012, Tourism Oversight and Promotion Board

This morning's post is done by 'GWS44'.

Today's Glenwood Springs Post Independent announces a deadline of this coming Friday (2 days from now), for 'vacancy' seats on the new Tourism Promotion Board that was just sat last fall.

These three seats have always had a short term in order to work the new board into the designated seating cycles. 'smalltown7' is just not buying the obvious today in the fact that the PI has not announced this publically so the folks could truly be informed.

When City Council chose to heavily seed the new board with the current marketing vendor's Board of Directors last Fall, the public noticed.  One of those seeds is Ken Murphy.  He sits both Chamber Board of Directors and the new Tourism Board.  Ken also was sitting the Financial Advisory Board that has a direct tie to the tourism grant fund requests.  Ken is a highly qualified person and well liked in the community.

smalltown7 points out again that this is not a popularity contest and we do not care for the performance of our City Council's oversight.

It is a true conflict of interest for the marketing vendor board of directors to be seating the Tourism Board.

The people's request for a city handled tourism board has seen nothing but purposefully driven friction from the tourism sector that is now having to fund their private businesses themselves and who support giving no public transparency.

Nobody will blink today seeing this from the PI. It's also possible they still just remain asleep at the wheel and missed the signficance of these seats upcoming.

We hope our resident seat in Scott has not already reached a point of being so fed-up with little to no true support (or) is watching the current harm being done to still yet another local family, that he decides this is not worth it and bails.  If he does, we hope John Duven steps up now that he has not turned in a petition to take the council seat held by Dave Sturges.

We call out today to 81601 avatars in commentary and ask you to pull in any tourism sector replacement that meets the requirements and at the very least replace Ken Murphy.  Steve Beckley needs to move on as well.  From the sound of the tourism feedback, his position of trying to force the old status quo that has kept both the rift in the community and our lodging revenues in the tank is just not right for 81601. 'necky', 'remedy'--you both could make this change happen because of how you are placed in the community.

There are terrific replacements on council in Leahy and Gamba.  They'll do a great job.

Support Edmonds for Arensman's seat and urge him into the position of Mayor.  smalltown could support Arensman if he retains his seat but feels it's time for a clean sweep.

Very disappointing that Dave Sturges has no competition unless what could be a well-supported write-in steps up. The one thing we know historically with Dave is that once he can finally be made to move, he usually follows through.  His handling of the chamber situation and his allowing the lack of support to hold the tourism board's positions is deeply concerning.

Applications for the Tourism Board seats are due by this Friday.

Good luck and our thanks,  to any qualified  individual stepping up.

4 comments:

glenwoodsprings22 for smalltown7 said...

Ok, everyone. Here's the answers to your mails and texts.

No, we won't be going on comments enabled any longer than Friday and hope to knock it down sooner if the city gets the info up on their site. Yes, the links work from safe and show safe's IP as referring URL.

In our view, it doesn't really matter if Murphy and Beckley don't get moved off the T. Board. Beckley isn't a chamber board of director anymore, but yes I personally agree with him being the wrong energy for 81601 promotion. It's time he focused on his own business, supported the egg basket of virus marketing we have now as being what it is. Maintenance. Something the city coulf farm out to Trent or Nash/Collins, save a bunch of dough doing that and call it good. We don't need full-time chamber employees and we really don't need to be paying the chamber's overhead for them. We do need hard-hitting, produce results and make effective use of our daily growing less lodging revenues. That is not happening with Beckley and the current marketing vendor. Three years worth now. Time to go.

Murphy, Tijm and Mock are just plain flat-out conflicts of interest because the control the Chamber Board of Directors too. If Murphy doesn't have somebody step up in the next two days (talk about a sandbag to the folks memory banks. Cheap shot), then it's really doubtful that Gamba, Leahy are going to sit still for putting up with the blatant conflict of interest. It's just wrong. Maybe it can be dealt with by taking a clue from the airport board and just sitting back until April. It would save two months and be better if we had someone who meets criteria just step up now. But then, they still have to get approved by current council and all Murphy and Beckley have to do apparently is to whine and that's not going to happen.

It is what it is, it's better than it was. At this point for us, we have serious concerns growing bigger every day on the security of our livelihoods and our loved ones. For now, we aren't going anywhere.

Yes, hard copy of old posts is avail. Just email in.

For what it's worth remedy, this is your chance to do what you have wanted for a long time. There are some very good people on the T. Board now, it would be a great fit for one of your crowd.

No, Carey's riverorg biz is in the county.

Anonymous said...

It's been a full conflict of interest for any of the tourism boards, old and new, to have any tie at all to the marketing vendor.

But that's the trouble with the chamber, isn't it?

It's all just a game to Marianne, always has been. I didn't like seeing her get trashed online, but as soon as I read it, I knew why it was done and that it would be the only way to get this in the open. That cracked rose colored mirror idea would be the only thing that would work.

I wonder how the chamber board members feel watching their businesses have the potential to circle the drain with Marianne? I wonder how CC members feel, watching the commissioners repeatedly nip any question of ethics or conflicts of interest and impropriety in the bud when they hit and now looking in the cracked mirror and seeing the way they have handled the real problem they have? I wonder how Jeff Hecksel and Attorney Schute feel watching this play out like a bad nightmare? I wonder how Martin Beeson feels watching Marianne Virgili in charge of his life and reputation? I know how cops feel about this train wreck. My family member is one.

There is no excuse for this to be where it is. If it continues, then in my view, all of these conflicts of interest or duty not followed become criminal acts.

You do what you need to do, smalltown8.

That's all you have done so far and you are patriots.

I am so, so sorry. Senseless tragedy.

PB said...

Preventable tragedy.
Preventable losses.
Preventable current waste of time, put the attention seeking chamber director behind some bars and put the spotlight on the bugs under the rug.
Nothing worse than a perp who thinks they're getting away with leading cops on a merry chase.

Heard Ken Murphy called this group cowards for using anonymity the way they have. I'll agree they're the opposite. Patriots is an excellent word.

Preventable losses. Get new leaders.

glenwoodsprings22 on behalf of smalltown8 said...

Ok everybody. Only email answer to be covered today is that we don't know where and when the video will go up.

It's hard to see people we care about hurt. It's even harder to know for sure, which we do, that staying the course until this thing is under some kind of real control and both the hurt stops and the answers come are finished.

We're turning comments back off again and doing that tonight. No, we still feel that the PI is not safe again yet. But there's sure not much left to say here at this time after today's comments. We'll decide if we enable them when we do the next post, whenever that is.

For what it's worth to all the avatars we know read just about everything we do and are in service fields of duty. His tone is dead on, we all pretty much feel the same way. for what it's worth, the men/man we know and trust with safety wouldn't insult our courage by it all of a sudden being 'ok' to dig into this now.

dig into it because it's way past time, we won't lose another one. Not because some city council or chamber director finally gave the go ahead.