The musical triple-header that just finished—Garth Brooks and Itzhak Perlman with the Sun Valley Symphony, and Steve Martin's banjo at River Run—drove home the reason the valley needs events of this caliber: They mean business.
Happy visitors taking in the clear mountain air, music and sunshine transformed Sun Valley and Ketchum. The towns were what they should be in the summer: busy.
Yet, anyone working in the valley knows "busy" doesn't happen by accident. It takes planning and investment, specifically in marketing and advertising the area and individual events.
In 1978 with the Idaho Legislature's passage of the law allowing resort cities to impose a voter-approved local-option sales tax on lodging, liquor and retail sales, the area's cities became able to generate revenue that reduced property taxes, guaranteed adequate city services, and provided money for economic development. In other words, the tax supported investment in marketing and public information.
Voters in both Ketchum and Sun Valley approved the local sales taxes as well as using them for economic development.
So, putting aside the recent local controversy over who will direct the Sun Valley area's marketing, it was unnerving to discover that in a little noticed June 28 meeting Sun Valley City Councilman Bob Youngman, who has led the charge for changes in marketing, went on record opposing the use of local-option sales tax revenues for marketing.
He stated, "I would just like to go on record saying that governments funding marketing is inappropriate, and that I will support that number going to zero in three to five years and asking this board to find other revenue sources to fund the resort-area marketing, either through the business community or through grants or through something else.
"I just think it's inappropriate for us to be sending that money in that direction. We've done it, we're not in a position just to say, 'No we're not going to do it,' although if we don't have the right structure it doesn't make sense to do it, so I'm not in favor of doing it this year unless we get the right long-term structure in place. My long-term vision is that it's zero for this city to be giving money for marketing efforts."
We beg to differ—strongly.
Using a portion of local-option sales taxes for marketing is entirely appropriate and utterly essential in a tourist economy.
As Abraham Lincoln said, "The legitimate object of government is to do for the people what needs to be done, but which they can not, by individual effort, do at all, or do so well, by themselves."
Ending the use of local-option sales tax revenues would severely injure the Sun Valley area's economy.
