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To get aid, events must prove profit

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By KEVIN WIATROWSKI

kwiatrowski@tampatrib.com

Published: November 4, 2009

DADE CITY - Pasco County commissioners put festival planners in the county on notice Tuesday: If you want county help, be prepared to prove how many hotel rooms your event fills.

The proposal will take affect in October with the 2010-11 budget.

County commissioners help festivals from New Port Richey's Chasco Fiesta to Dade City's Bug Jam with out-of-county advertising expenses. For the 2009-10 budget year, that support amounts to more than $78,000.

The county's Tourist Development Committee has doled out the money, which comes from the county's 18-year-old tax on hotel rooms, based on how much the members thought each event deserved.

This year, for the first time, county officials created a system to rank recipients based, in part, on how many hotel stays they generate. That system created a stir last month as some recipients suggested others were predicting unrealistic hotel stay figures for events this year.

The system will require event organizers to report where their participants stayed and for how long.

If events don't bring in the number of overnight guests or fall short of the number predicted when the organizers asked for county help, the event will have to give back the corresponding proportion of county support, tourism director Eric Keaton said.

"For the next year, we're going to take a close look at what they're doing," commission Chairman Jack Mariano said.

Also at Tuesday's meeting, commissioners heard that Pasco County has spent more federal housing assistance during the last six months than any other county in Florida.
Community Development Director George Romagnoli said he learned of the county's status in a report from the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development.

Pasco got nearly $20 million in federal help from the Neighborhood Stabilization Program - one of the largest awards in the state - based, in part, on the number of foreclosed homes in the county.

The county has spent millions to buy and rehab abandoned houses, help people buy homes and turn property around for people with special needs.
Romagnoli said the program started off strong earlier this year but has slowed as investors purchased many of the houses the county had targeted for rehab.
Romagnoli said banks have proven reluctant to help potential buyers purchase homes in need of repairs. That reluctance also has put a crimp in the county's ability to get abandoned houses back into homeowners' hands.

"We didn't anticipate the lack of participations from the banks," Romagnoli said.

Reporter Kevin Wiatrowski can be reached at (813) 731-8168.

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