August 27, 2009
If it ain’t broke don’t fix it
A plan by some on the Taylor County Board to shift the tourism dollars spent contracting with the Medford Area Chamber of Commerce (MACC) to the county's information technology (IT) department is misguided.
Rather than the supposed savings that might result by bringing these tasks in-house versus contracting with a community group, the county and those wanting to travel here to spend money at local businesses would see a decrease in services and an increase in costs for those services.
The county currently contracts with MACC for about $17,000 per year for the chamber to serve as the county's tourism office. This partnership has worked exceedingly well for the county and other communities look here as an example of how to do things right.
Now, some on the Taylor County Board want to fix what isn't broken. While the plan has yet to be fully presented at any county meeting, its basic details seem to be widely known among supervisors begging the question of what behind the scenes budget dealing is taking place.
The scheme involves eliminating the contract with MACC and having the county's IT department update the tourism web site for the county. Presumably the other duties of the tourism office, such as staying open late on Fridays and Saturdays to serve as a registration station for snowmobilers and answering questions about events or mailing out packets of information would be picked up in the supposed free time of county employees.
There is no doubt the county's IT department has the staff, training and equipment to produce a very nice calendar of events web site. After all county taxpayers have paid for that hardware, software and training. The question becomes one of generating content.
Anyone can post information to a site, but tracking down the information and making sure it is accurate is a whole other challenge and it is one proponents of the scheme have not taken into account.
The question of course, is if the IT department personnel have so much free time to take on such significant tasks as web development and ongoing updates, then why do we have so many highly paid staff members in the IT department? Or is this a case of trying to find something for the mechanics to do in between breakdowns?
Let's also put this in perspective in the whole of the Taylor County budget. While significant to an individual $17,000 is a drop in the ocean to the $20 million county budget.
Even compared to the $750,000 shortfall members of the finance committee have bandied about, because it will be more of a shift than a savings, the bottom line impact will be negligible.
It will be up to the members of the finance committee at next month's budget hearings to determine what cuts will be proposed for final board approval.
Let us hope these board members look at the benefits resulting from the partnership with the chamber and not fall into a feeding frenzy of indiscriminate budget hacking.
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