By Scott D. Johnston
An overflow crowd was on hand as 10 candidates seeking four Ocean Shores City Council seats answered a variety of questions for more than three hours in a town hall forum Sunday afternoon at the Lions Club.
The event was produced by Ocean Shores Block Watch and Disaster Preparedness, hosted by Randy Peck, and moderated by North Coast News editor Angelo Bruscas.
Candidates present and seats they are running for were:
Position 1, incumbent John Lynn, and challengers Susan Conniry and Michael Darling. Position 3, incumbent Lisa Griebel and challengers Shannon Ruben and John Schroeder. Position 5, Steve Ensley and Randy Scott. Position 7, Robert Crumpacker and Carlos Roldan. Jackie Farra, the incumbent in Position 5, filed to run for Position 3, but an out of town family matter caused her to miss the forum. Will Oaks filed for Position 5, then withdrew, but did so after the deadline for inclusion in the upcoming Aug. 1 primary.
Position 3 is a two-year term. Dan Overton was re-elected to that seat in 2015, but resigned last year after taking a job in Olympia. Griebel was appointed by the council to fill his seat until this fall’s election.
Several questions were about local events, the Ocean Shores Convention Center and its management, and the study recently presented by Pinnacle Venue Services, which described the center as needing a sales professional and multi-faceted marketing effort to reach the next level.
Rubin said many events have been popular, but “there needs to be a lot of improvement … they’re not marketed well, there’s no collaboration with hotels to market … we need to look for out-of-the-box type events.”
Rubin, manager of the Canterbury Inn, added, “It irks me that our company collects lodging tax … and has absolutely no say in how it is spent. There is an LTAC board; their recommendations were not listened to.” She also said the Pinnacle report contains some very, very valid recommendations, but “anyone in the hospitality industry… could give you three-fourths of those recommendations. If you’re a seasoned hospitality professional, you wouldn’t have needed a $20,000 report. … It needs to be professionally managed.”
Schroeder said, “I think part of our system is broken, all events we have are dying down … we’re throwing business away.” On Convention Center management, he said, “I’m in favor of privatizing the Convention Center. They have not done a good job so far and I don’t think they will ever do a really good job.”
Lynn noted the venue has two types of events, various large meetings of groups and organizations, and local events open to the public, such as the bikers and Seahawks fans. He said some are cyclical. “How many people remember the Jazz (Festival)? That was a big deal, but it went away everywhere.” He said Ocean Shores should “keep our eye on what other communities are doing,” see what’s working and “reach out to bring those events in to help bring people to the community.”
Lynn said the local venue “must have a person that reaches out and books groups coming in. Now, we’ve done this twice in the past with outside groups” and it didn’t work. He said the venue needs “an experienced person to work conventions steadily. It’s a long-term effort … it probably won’t pay off for four or five years, but we need to be out on the circuit where these people are.”
Darling said, “Marketing is key; we need to reach outside of Grays Harbor.” He agreed that convention centers are not supposed to — except in “rare, rare situations — generate a lot of revenues for a city.”
Conniry used the event question to state a theme of her campaign — that the city should have regular town hall meetings to encourage two-way discussions with the city’s leaders and its citizens, “where we can all come in and share our ideas.”
She said, “I think we all agree that we need to market Ocean Shores.” She also said the Pinnacle report confirmed the Convention Center “is actually doing quite well.”
But she would like to see “an in-depth, two-way conversation” with the public asking questions of venue management, “so that we can understand how this process works. I believe we need to have that citizen engagement with every project.”
Crumpacker agreed that marketing is the key for events, the venue, “and Ocean Shores in general. “If we have a professional person marketing both the Convention Center and Ocean Shores, then we may be able to attract some of those events.”
He said Public Facilities District executives who had a meeting event here in 2014 did an informal evaluation of the venue and offered recommendations, which were “very congruent with what Pinnacle says. We need to quit trying to reinvent that wheel, accept that Pinnacle knows what it’s talking about … to have a full-time, professional sales person dedicated to our own facility.”
Roldan said he would like to see live music concerts in city parks that “it’s going to bring all of us together and when we all come together then we’re going to look at how we can bring out-of-towners into our community.” He said events at the Convention Center need to be focused around the family, instead of just focusing on adults.
“We need more profitable events at the Convention Center, we do need the marketing person,” he said; but, “I think that our present director needs to be removed. That person has not shown the ability to even work with the Convention Center and try to fix the problems that are there.”
Scott said, “I think you can’t market without good planning. … I know that the Chamber (of Commerce) has worked on this in the past and continues to work on it … I think getting the Chamber (of Commerce) together with the hotel association, the city tourism committee, the Convention Center operating people and putting together a plan and advertising it and having public meetings about it would be the way for us to work on it. I know we have a lot of good brain power in this city… so we need to build on that.”
He said he believes that “a professional sales person rather than a professional management company is really what we need.”
Ensley, who retired last year after five years as city finance director, said, “I look forward to when we can determine that we have the resources to follow up on all the reports that we’ve had,” that always say “we have to spend money to market the facility and market the town.”
He said the Convention Center “is an economic development investment that the city needs to recognize … that we need to do marketing and need to find out how to pay for it. That, unfortunately, has been the stumbling block for a long time. … We need to make that commitment to find the money to do what, in the long run, is in our best interests, to market that center.”
Griebel said, “The theme that I heard is that we need to work together. How can we develop a structure that all the interested parties could come together, do the planning and come together for the ideas,” keeping in mind that “the visitors are our future residents.”
On the Pinnacle report, she said, “I think that our city has already started implementing some of the short-term recommendations.”
The report suggests the city needs “to make a decision on whether we’re a civic center or a convention center,” that the latter may mean having to “make some tough decisions about some of the events we hold locally there,” because “a convention center is an economic generator for the community. It brings people in, puts heads in the beds.”
The candidates also weighed in on the Pt. Brown improvement project. Lynn, Ensley and Darling support the project, Griebel is undecided and the remaining candidates all oppose it.
Schroeder said he thinks it is too costly and has grown too far beyond the original intent; Scott would like to find more creative ways to finance it. Roldan said there’s no suggestion it will bring more revenue to the city; Crumpacker said it won’t help tourism, “Nobody’s going to come to Ocean Shores (just because) we put sidewalks on Pt. Brown.”
Conniry said there has been “no appropriate gathering with people” to discuss the project.
Rubin said she thinks determining whether all needed right of ways could be acquired should come before design.
Positions 1, 3 and 5 are on the primary ballot, which was mailed to voters last week. Election day is Tuesday, Aug. 1.
