The Valdez City Council held a work session on Thursday, October 16, 2025, at 5:30 PM to discuss the 2026 budget request from the Valdez Convention and Visitors Bureau (VCVB). Director Faith Harris presented the proposed budget, which included a 4% increase over the previous year, totaling approximately $562,500. The discussion covered membership trends, marketing strategies, new event proposals, organizational governance, and financial accountability. Council members expressed divergent views on the appropriate funding level, with some advocating to cap funding at the expected accommodation tax revenue of $505,000 and others requesting more detailed justification before making a decision. The council ultimately tabled the item and requested additional documentation from the VCVB before a follow-up meeting on October 27, 2025.
All right. Well, let's uh start this work session here with the uh Values Visitors and Convention Center Bureau budget. Um so we're looking, we have all their budget information in front of us. I think the director Faith is here. And then I think we're gonna start off with our ex officio member of the VCBB, uh, Councilmember Woody with uh the discussion. Thank you very much. Did you want to come on up? Hi, Faith Harris from Discover Valdez or Valdez Convention and Visitors Bureau. Thank you so much for being here, Faith, and to the board members that are also present. Um I have a couple questions. I'm gonna be mostly going through the official 2026 budget narrative, and I'm gonna try to keep it as an order as possible going through one through 13 pages. Um I have a couple questions for you. If you want me to park it, you see, I can do that. Huh? Lester. We can hear you there. All right. Uh so my first question is on page one, it reflects membership income for 2025 was $9,700. Um, while it's anticipated to be 12,600, was participation low. As of last year. Is that your friends? Yeah. Actually, so what I noticed when I first came in uh to the organization was that we had quite a few people who had not been re-registered for business uh for membership. I think our numbers were gone like astronomically low over what they had been previously, only because there had not been the renewal and the upkeep that was necessary during those uh few years prior to me coming into the organization. So how were the participation numbers this year? Oh, they were excellent. In fact, what I did notice from uh our membership is I wanna say the percentage I don't exactly have at this time, but it was going to be 20 to 30 percent higher, including we had an additional, I think six king members, an additional um quite a few silver members as well, and then a ton of new pink members, which are our free members. So yeah, a lot of really good feedback. Um, I think in the previous years, they hadn't felt that they'd had a lot of opportunity for communication and not even really been on the radar. And this year we really uh went individually, particularly our membership coordinator had gone uh person by person just to engage with them and just to feel out what it is that they needed and wanted in the organization and how we could help them and serve and serve them better. So what is the VCVB basing its financial request to the city on? So what we're doing this year is status quo plus a percentage increase. Our intention, as you guys can see, is transitioned greatly. I gave the um the board two options. One of them was the kind of status quo, we're gonna stick with the numbers as is, um, with not a whole level of consideration for how we're going to become further sustainable with our goal that we discussed previously. I think um uh council member love had spoke of this with us, considering that we're looking at within the next five years or so, we'd like to get down to a 50% mark. Um, and so what we did in this decision was as uh as a board, they had chosen to move forward with a higher level of engagement and creation of new events that would sort of help support support an eventual eventual goal to become sustainable uh and to release uh ourselves from you know the need from for as much funding as what we've been doing. So local businesses at the small business event expressed dispatch dissatisfaction with VCVB and mentioned attempts to create a chamber of commerce. How do you foresee that impacting VCVB if they were to move forward? I think that's amazing. In fact, I just gotten the information about that pretty much directly after the meeting. Um we tend didn't have enough notice that we were able to go to it and be participating with the butt with the business members. But when I got wind of it, I think it's actually a beautiful thing. It's something that our organization has had a really difficult time with in probably the fat past at least five to ten years and maybe farther back since the beginning was almost an identity crisis of sorts because the community members and our business members were looking for uh Discover Valdez, Valdece Convention and Visitors Bureau to fill the need for that chamber that uh we were not originally you know created to do. We are created as a convention and visitors bureau, and as we transition forward into the role of that destination marketing organization, each one of those titles have a uniquely different role to play. They uh address completely different strategic priorities, and they also have a heavy way on what the mission statement of our organization is. So, in this case, we as a convention and visitors bureau that's merging into this destination marketing organization, our goal is twofold. First of all, we promote Valdees as a destination, promoting leisure, art, culture, and adventure in Valdees. Um, and in a lot of ways, this idea of having a chamber come through would only offer further opportunities to our business community. So in any way that we can support that, we're very excited to participate and see that giving everybody sort of the place in the world that they need.