Humboldt Tourism Business Improvement District Follow-up Report

Additional Recommendations 2

These recommendations are not explicitly linked to specific findings.

• R3
  The Humboldt Lodging Alliance expenditures should conform to the requirements of the District Management Plan.
• R4
  The County should ensure that there is no commingling of funds between the Humboldt Lodging Alliance and the Humboldt County Convention and Visitors Bureau. Responses were requested from the following: The County Administrative Office, the Humboldt County Board of Supervisors, and the Humboldt Lodging Alliance. RESPONSES TO THE 2012-2013 GRAND JURY RECOMMENDATIONS All three parties agreed with Recommendation 1 (R1) concerning Brown Act and Public Records Act training. The Board of Supervisors and the County Administrative Office both stated that the Administrative Office with the assistance of County Counsel would provide training and educational materials concerning these laws. This training has not yet been provided but is tentatively scheduled for the end of May 2014. The Humboldt Lodging Alliance agreed with Recommendations 2 through 4 (R2-R4) concerning monitoring of its activities and records, and stated, “The above documents,” namely operations, minutes and financial records, “are available for inspection and may be requested through our administrator, the Humboldt County Convention & Visitors Bureau.” The 2013-2014 Grand Jury finds this response troubling. It is not at all clear what form such a request would have to take. The website of the Humboldt Lodging Alliance is inadequate for this purpose. As of the date this is written, there are no meeting agendas posted. There is one set of minutes posted, from May 2013. There are no reports of activities, though the organization has existed for almost two years. On February 25, 2014, the executive director of both the Humboldt County Convention and Visitors Bureau and the Humboldt Lodging Alliance presented an annual report to the Board of Supervisors. This presentation was referred to in both the agenda and the minutes for that meeting as a report from the Humboldt County Convention and Visitors Bureau. Witnesses to that presentation testified that it was unclear as to whether or not, and to what degree activities of the Humboldt Lodging Alliance were included in that report. There was neither a copy of the report attached to the meeting minutes nor a copy of this report posted to either the Humboldt Lodging Alliance or the Humboldt County Convention and Visitors Bureau websites. We note that the Agreement for Services between the County of Humboldt and the Humboldt Lodging Alliance, dated June 12, 2012, Section 7.1 states “Notwithstanding any other provision of the Agreement, should Contractor fail to perform any of its obligations hereunder, within the time and in the manner provided, ….County may terminate this Agreement by giving Contractor written notice of such termination, stating the reason for termination, if Contractor does not cure the reason given of receiving written notice.” The Humboldt Lodging Alliance is explicitly obliged to prepare and submit an annual report on its activities under the Agreement for Service with the County. With respect to Recommendations 2 through 4 (R2-R4) of the 2012-13 report, the Board of Supervisors and the County Administrative Office both noted that the County does not have the resources necessary to offer the oversight proposed. The Grand Jury has learned that the county has a variety of agreements with numerous nonprofit organizations as well as other governmental or quasi-governmental entities. Each of these organizations has requirements to provide information to the County on a regular basis. However, there is currently no systematic method for tracking whether the required information is at least being submitted in a timely fashion. The 2013-14 Grand Jury acknowledges that the County may not have sufficient resources to engage in the intensity of monitoring recommended by the 2012-13 Grand Jury. However, the County could lessen its long term administrative burden by creating a systematic monitoring system, such as an Excel spreadsheet, that would list what reports, information, and documents are required from each of these agencies. It would then be a simple matter to determine when and if the agencies are in compliance with these requirements. If, after systematically monitoring these submissions, the County staff find evidence that information is not being submitted in a timely fashion, the County should consider reassessing the contract with the entity that is failing to respond. When the County develops new contracts or modifies existing contracts are modified with such agencies, the contract should contain clauses about the need for the agency to submit required information in a timely manner, and the consequences that that will result if the agency fails to submit such information.