This video is about 30 minutes long.
A proposed 70% cut to the town’s advertising budget during a recent budget work session has St. Michaels business owners concerned.
During the April 16 virtual session, St. Michaels Commissioner T. Coleman “Tad” DuPont suggested reducing advertising spending from $140,000 to $40,000 in the proposed Fiscal Year 2022 budget.
DuPont, the commission’s treasurer, said the town should not be encouraging more visitors when businesses are unable, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, to accommodate current visitors.
He later suggested the savings could be used to fund other costs associated with tourism, such as an additional police officer and Saturday trash pickup.
The funds for advertising do not come from town taxpayers, but from the accommodations tax paid by guests staying at hotels and other lodging.
Talbot County collects the tax, then disburses it to the towns where the money was collected (after deducting up to 5% for administrative costs).
County law requires towns to use accommodations tax revenue “to alleviate costs associated with tourism.”
St. Michaels currently allocates 25% of its accommodations tax revenue “directly to advertising,” 5% to the volunteer fire department, and the remaining 70% throughout its budget “to help support the cost of tourism to the town, ie. Personnel, restroom maintenance, weekend trash pickup, a small portion of dump fees, park maintenance, a portion of Liability Insurance, infrastructure repairs and maintenance, a portion of capital improvements, etc.,” Town Manager Jean Weisman said in response to an information request.
If the town commissioners were to adopt DuPont’s proposal, St. Michaels would only be committing about 8 percent of its accommodations tax revenue directly to advertising to promote tourism to the town.
DuPont’s proposal led to a lengthy and occasionally heated discussion among town commissioners, with Vice President Jaime M. Windon questioning such a drastic cut.
Windon said town business owners would be “aghast” to hear the proposal.
In an April 19 email, Kim Hannon, St. Michaels Business Association president, informed members about the proposed cut.
“Hi, I am writing to let all of you know that the Commissioners of St. Michaels have been discussing slashing the annual advertising budget from $140,000 to $40,000! YES, slashing it $100,000 – 70% CUT,” Hannon wrote.
Town commissioners did not reach a consensus on the cut during the April 16 budget work session and are waiting to learn how much it would cost to outsource trash pickup before setting the next work session.
A public hearing on the budget will be held after it is officially introduced.
The town’s current draft budget, which includes other changes town commissioners accepted by consensus during the April 16 work session, is below.
St. Michaels FY22 Budget 4-16 DRAFT
Maureen McHugh says
Advertising is desperately needed for the Town of St. Michaels. As Covid-19 restrictions are lifted people will start to gravitate to locations further from home via air travel. Adverting – Billboards and Print Advertising work… it reminds people about St. Michaels when headed to the beach, DC/NOVA. Please do not cut 70% of the advertising budget. Please survey the business owners/hotels/BNBs etc… Advertising funds are paid by the accommodation tax in my opinion those funds should not be diverted or removed from advertising to go towards the general fund.
Michael Davis says
I think the Talbot County Council should fund tourist advertising for all of Talbot, including St. Michaels, under the right circumstances. They should look to the Preserve Talbot History group for financial support. According to the Council and the Talbot history group, we should be proud of the Talbot Boys and the statue should be prominently featured in all tourist promotional material for the County.
Christina Mills says
Good that there will be a public hearing to allow the members of the St. Michaels community to discuss the 70% drastic cut, which would affect many businesses and jobs. Not a good time to hurt our community businesses, which have had enough challenges in the last year.
Michael Estrella says
The full video for this particular meeting is substantial longer than the 30 minute version shown here. The recording of that meeting, and other meetings, is available to the public on the town’s web site. The full length tape is well worth the time it takes to view and can give the public some insights on what is really going on with this particular commission. However, this tape does reveal that it wasn’t just commissioner DuPont that seems to have mistaken what transpired in a meeting he had with two restaurant owners and others. The video reveals that commissioner Breimhurst seems to promote the narrative that the two business owners were ok with the planned massive 70% cut to the town advertising budget as well.
Many folks thought that the Era of Alternative Facts was brought to a close with the last election and inauguration but that may not be the case here in St. Michaels. Some of our town commissioners seem to be operating on the premise that, in the matter of advertising the town, everything came to a halt in March of 2020 and that the town stopped spending in support of various programs. They may have assumed this was the case without checking with the town staff. To them it may have only been logical that, because some tourist continued to come to town, it was OK to slash the advertising budget. But, as the video shows, the real facts don’t support the DuPont/Breimhurst premise and the facts were available to the commissioners, just a phone call away.
Having watch all of the legally viewable budget meetings this year, it seems that Alternative Facts have crept into the budget process and may be the cause of the missteps and the extended length of these meetings and of the failure to reach unilateral agreement. We need to stop guessing about what is happening and what is needed. We need to return to a fact based budget process, nothing else is acceptable.
Curtis says
Seems to me that the town is famous enough at this point where it doesn’t even really need to advertise. Perhaps I’m wrong about that but no one that I’ve talked to in town that’s visiting said it was because of an ad they saw.
John Lacoco says
In my opinion, tax money collected from business owners should be used to benefit the health and safety of the residents of the town. Advertising should be the sole responsibility of the businesses. The Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum, restaurants, distilleries, winerys, hotels, galleries, knick-knack shops etc. should be paying for their own advertising. Taxes collected from the businesses should help cover the extra expenses to the town generated by their customers, i.e. trash, sanitation, traffic control and policing. I have been a resident of Saint Michaels for 36 years and I am tired of hearing business owners complaining of not getting enough from the town. I would like to see a commission that represented the residents of the town and not just the business owners. One can easily see who represents who on this video.