TARPON SPRINGS — One city commissioner wants Tarpon Springs to hire a tourism director to draw more visitor dollars and open a new revenue stream. The vice mayor, meanwhile, warned that repairs to the Craig Park seawall along Spring Bayou may not be finished in time for Epiphany.
Both issues came up during commissioners’ comments at the July 28 meeting. The board agreed to hold a work session, at a date to be announced, on Vice Mayor Michael Eisner’s concerns about the seawall.
Commissioner Lori Weaver asked her colleagues to consider “the idea and the benefits of hiring a director of tourism.”
“While a lot of people right now might suggest that hiring a director of tourism is an expense, I don’t see it that way. I see it as we need it now more than ever,” she said.
“We can’t just focus on cutting a budget. We have to focus on bringing revenue to the city,” Weaver said. “And we have to focus on bringing revenue to the city in a manner that is appropriate for the city. It can’t just be a lot of growth. It can’t just be a lot of opportunity for new property tax. It has to be something that works with our culture and our historic nature here.”
Tourism, she said, is tied to what makes the city distinctive.
“I don’t think anyone can argue that tourism is a very important component of being here. We need it. Without it, we will lose a lot of the things we love,” she said.
Weaver said the goal is to get visitors to stay longer and spend more.
“Right now, the last report that I saw, day trippers spend an average of an hour and a half here. What that tells me is people are coming to shop, or people are coming to eat, but they’re not doing both — they need to do both,” she said.
“We need this tourism for the downtown area, we need it for the Sponge Docks, we need it for the waterfront,” Weaver said. “A director of tourism would develop a strategy for the city and we would have some measurable goals. A director of tourism would create partnerships and development that keeps our historical charm and the character of our city, because that’s where the money is.”
She also called for a city website that would tell visitors in one place what they can see and do on specific dates, with links to local businesses, to tickets for Cultural Center performances and to tour boats and fishing charters.
“We can’t count on the county to promote our city. They are promoting the entire county,” she said. “We need to do this from within.”
“The thing that I love about a tourism department is that it pays for itself, so the money that a tourism department would bring in would actually supplement the cost of having it,” Weaver said. “We need to capitalize on our tourism.”
Commissioner David Banther said the city’s promotional efforts are already scattered across several offices.
“Commissioner Weaver, that’s some very interesting ideas. I know that in the past we had, and currently have, that in a very disjointed manner,” he said. “At first, if someone told me let’s hire a tourism director right now, I’m like, ‘Why would we hire anybody right now, based off our budget constraints?’ But it’s something to look into. If it can pay for itself, maybe down the road it can bring together some of these initiatives that we had for that in different places, so I look forward to hearing more about that.”
Mayor John Koulianos said the city’s financial picture could shift depending on a November referendum.
“The game is going to change a little bit maybe after November, if that referendum passes, and we’re going to have to look at a new paradigm of thought in how we function,” he said.
“Getting our town to be more vibrant in commerce, then creates more of the other tax that can create revenue for us, so I appreciate you thinking outside the box,” Koulianos said. “And it’s most likely we’ll probably have to do that come November, and so you bringing that up now is appropriate.”
Eisner then raised what he called “some tough topics,” saying the Craig Park seawall work does not match what commissioners were told to expect.
The project, he said, “includes construction of a new seawall extending from the Craig Park boat ramp to the observation deck on the south side of Spring Bayou. The new seawall will include tie-backs with anchors, a reinforced concrete cap, and will raise the wall by approximately 2 feet. The adjacent grade and sidewalk immediately behind the wall will also be elevated accordingly.”
“None of this has been done on the west wall,” he said.
Plans also call for raising the seawall and sidewalk around the park’s perimeter “to protect Craig Park from tidal flooding,” on a stretch running from the boat ramp to the pedestrian observation deck, Eisner said. “Again, that has not been done.”
The plans include “the addition of a short grassy berm, less than 2 feet above grade — that’s above grade, not above sea level — around the western side of the park at a new elevation,” he said. The new elevation should not be lower than the old one, Eisner said, but it is.
His sharpest concern was the seawall near Tarpon Avenue, which he said needs to be finished before the Epiphany celebration.
“I want to make sure we are moving ahead with that, because what I don’t want to do is get to Epiphany and have spikes sticking up and no place to put anything. That is my fear,” Eisner said. “That makes that sort of an emergency, and I’m not getting answers as to why these piles cannot be driven into the ground.”
City Manager Mark LeCouris said he is aware of the problem and expects to have information for the board in a report from former public services director Paul Smith, who has returned to the city to look into the concerns and report to the commission.
Eisner also asked for an agenda item on the lack of progress in moving the city clerk’s office to new quarters, a project that has dragged on more than two years.