The Erie County Legislature has proposed cutting another $450,000 in bed tax funding from convention and tourism services for 2006. This is on top of the $1.5 million in bed tax cuts that were made to the Buffalo Niagara Convention & Visitors Bureau budget in 2005.
By way of background, the bed tax is collected each time someone checks into an Erie County hotel and is self-imposed by county hotels for the purpose of promoting tourism and bringing more visitors to Buffalo and Erie County. The bed tax is not borne by local residents. It's collected from the nearly four million visitors who stay in our hotels each year. These same visitors eat in our restaurants, shop in our stores and go to our attractions, leaving behind hundreds of millions of dollars in expenditures and millions of dollars in sales tax, which in turn provides significant tax relief to every household in Erie County.
This is something we need more of, not less.
Buffalo has to compete for attention from tourists alongside scores of other destinations. By de-funding tourism marketing and disabling the Convention & Visitors Bureau, our region will find itself increasingly overlooked as a potential visitor destination and the considerable investment that has been made in the Martin House, the Buffalo Zoo, Graycliff and elsewhere will not deliver the kind of economic impact we desperately need. Just building it and hoping they will come is a romantic notion. Real life isn't quite so simple or easy -- competition for visitors is fierce and we need to be in the public eye with a consistent and compelling message. Itis not enough to just build New Buffalo. We need to market it and these cuts will mean that is no longer possible.
The County Legislature is scheduled to vote on this proposed cut at 4 pm on Tuesday. Take a minute to let you County legislator know just how shortsighted and ill considered this move would be. Very simply, this funding generates revenue. To cut it is stupid and harmful.
Please call or write:
Lynn Marinelli - Majority Leader 716.832.0493 Email: lynnm@buffnet.net
George Holt - Chairman 716.842.0490 Email: holt@erie.gov
And the rest of the lotOe