Editorial

Contract should be fee for service. Period.

The Chamber of Commerce wants a contract with the city for the visitor information services it performs. Three years ago, the last time the Chamber and the city had a contract for these services, the fee the city agreed to pay was $3,400, the same fee it had paid for several years.

Now the Chamber is asking for an increase to $10,000. In return, the council wants a pound of flesh.

A council that barely blinked an eye when it approved $100,000 for an economic development addition to its budget on the recommendation of an interim city manager, has come up with quite a list of hoops for the Chamber to jump through for its additional $6,600.

Even though the contract and the additional funding is specifically for services rendered, no one is suggesting that the Chamber account for the use of this money by reporting how well it is providing visitor information services for the city. Instead, the city wants to measure the Chamber's effectiveness by monitoring sales and business license-tax revenue.

Here's an idea. How about measuring the effectiveness of the $100,000 economic development program by monitoring sales and business-license tax revenue?

What's more, the city is trying to convince the Chamber to sign a contract that would require the organization to act as a liaison between the city and businesses in issues of noncompliance with city codes.

That certainly presents a cozy scenario--the city and the organization whose charge is to advocate for the interests of the business community, working as a team to bring businesses into compliance with codes the Chamber might well oppose.

Chamber Executive Abby Krimotat was right on the money when she suggested that such a relationship smacked of a conflict of interests.

If these strings attached to a $10,000 contract for visitor services weren't enough, Councilman Evan Baker would also like to see the Chamber "more in sync" with the council philosophically. He'd like to withhold money for visitor services because the Chamber took a position contrary to the council's on Azule Crossing and on the Mountain Winery.

If the only way the Chamber can get a contract with the city--a contract for specific services that benefit the city--is to let itself become so co-opted that it no longer effectively serves its members, it should let the city provide its own visitor services.

But before letting the situation deteriorate any further, city officials ought to check with their neighbors in Los Gatos to find out what it was like when the Chamber of Commerce there literally went out of business leaving the town with no alternative but to provide these services. They'll get an earful.

In Los Gatos, a new Chamber of Commerce was born and has grown to become a force in the community and a sometimes vocal opponent of town policies.

That didn't stop the town from putting $47,000 in this year's budget for visitor information services provided by the Chamber, including brochure and map-printing costs, staffing of a visitor information office and management of a town website.

In Los Gatos, when it comes to the Chamber of Commerce, they know all too well that sometimes you don't know what you've got until it's gone.

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