St. Charles tourism promotion could see 10 percent cut
By TIM KANE – tkane@kcchronicle.com
ST. CHARLES – The City Council is expected to cut funding for promoting conventions and tourism by about 10 percent this year.
Aldermen – at a committee meeting Monday night – heard a pitch from Amy Egolf, executive director of the St. Charles Convention & Visitors Bureau, who was looking for funding for her agency.
Trustees recommended the allocation of about $526,500, about 10 percent less than last year.
“The city did not single out [the bureau],” said Chris Minick, finance director for the city of St. Charles. “Ten percent reductions in funding are planned for all outside agencies.”
What the city gives to the bureau makes up about half of the bureau’s budget.
The bureau will pay the city about $15,000 this fall to offset the costs of public works and police overtime for the Scarecrow Festival Oct. 9 through Oct. 11.
Attendance for last year’s Scarecrow Festival was more than 100,000.
This year, the city of St. Charles made about $1.8 million from hotel-motel tax, down from $1.9 million last year, Minick said.
Aldermen are expected to vote on the funding measure July 6.
Egolf said the reduction in funding is understandable and told aldermen that the visitor’s bureau also is taking a hit from the Illinois Bureau of Tourism, which notified her that state funding could be cut by 8 percent, or about $14,880.
“The state budget hasn’t passed yet,” Egolf said Tuesday, adding that the state could decide to give the St. Charles Convention & Visitors Bureau even less.
Nationally, “ill-advised and well-publicized junkets by troubled companies” have cast a shadow over corporate travel and has had an effect on St. Charles, according to a bureau report.
She added that the city would “crawl out of the canyon” mainly because it has an established reputation as a destination. St. Charles is home to such places as the Pheasant Run Resort, the Q-Center [formerly Arthur Andersen facility] and 11 hotels with a total of about 2,400 rooms for guests, she said.
Nearby DuPage Expo Center, with its 25,000 square feet of space, is being marketed as “the Pheasant Run Resort Campus.” Also nearby is The DuPage Airport, the 29th busiest corporate airport in the U.S.
“What sets us apart is the live theater and outdoor recreation,” Egolf said. “The paddle-wheel boats on the Fox River have been around since the 1940s. We have unique retail. And we are home to the Kane County Flea Market, which is a boon to us.”
