MORGANTOWN — The Monongalia County Commission and the Visit Mountaineer Country Convention and Visitor’s Bureau are looking forward to jump-starting tourism in the county.
Actually, they’re looking backward.
The commission is expected to approve $150,000 to help resurrect the CVB’s Tourism Advancement Fund when it meets on Wednesday.
The fund, which CVB President and CEO Susan Riddle explained was used in years past to spur tourism and the local economy, essentially sets up a grant process aimed at enticing events to the area.
For example, an event planner could apply to help cover the cost of security and traffic control for a concert or supplies for a conference.
“It could be anything,” Riddle said, adding “Those dollars would come right back into the community in the form of pay to our local law enforcement, fees to local rental companies or retailers.”
Riddle said she’s hopeful the application process will be in place starting in June, barring any objections by the CVB’s board of directors at next week’s meeting.
Once an application is submitted, a committee will review and score it based on a number of criteria, including how many people the event will draw, the economic impact to the local economy and the benefit to the local community, among others.
According to Riddle, the decision of whether or not to offer grant dollars will be based on economics, not emotion or politics.
“That’s what this is,” she said. “It drives tourism.”
And tourism could use a hand right now as communities look to work themselves out from under COVID-19.
“The more we can stimulate the tourism industry through this type of offering for different event planners and groups to get people back and moving through the community, the sooner we’ll be able to realize all the other things we do.”
Monongalia County Commissioner Tom Bloom said the initial plan was to wait and see if the commission could use American Rescue Plan money to back the fund, but the need is immediate and there are still questions about exactly how those dollars can be allocated.
“We want to help jumpstart small business. They haven’t really been able to do much of anything. We’re just opening up,” Bloom said, expressing concern about the number of businesses that have either already closed or are on the verge of doing so. “I don’t want to wait until September. If we’ve got this money, we can get this process started.”
TWEET @DominionPostWV
