Kudos are in order to Mayor Curt Pringle and the entire city council of Anaheim for making a modest investment in promoting their destination city. While the theme of their float, as described in today’s Register, is promotion of the 2010 major league baseball All Star game, in which Anaheim is the host city, I would get on their case if they didn’t enter a float this year. Budgeting $150,000 for this float is a no brainer.
Do Juice readers have any idea how much money Anaheim collects every year just from their hotel taxes alone? Their TOT tax for 2008/09 was $80.8 million dollars. Anaheim has 20,000 hotel and motel rooms to fill. Compare that revenue to Mission Viejo where we are projecting $500,000 TOT this year.Register reporter Eric Carpenter is quoted to say that “Mission Viejo spent $300,000 in city funds to celebrate its 20th anniversary, but decided not to return this year.”
You bet they decided not to return after we exposed the self serving abuse of taxpayer funds when we are built out and are not a destination city.
After our council getting hammered in Juice posts and public comments at council meetings our City Manager, who is an active member of the Tournament of Roses Parade association, left it to the council to decide if we would apply to the association with another entry this year. That was a somber evening.
If Eric had read our August 2008 Juice accounts, or contacted me, I would gladly have shared my investigative research on the incidental expenditures which drove the final cost of the Mission Viejo float to $400,000.
Another nugget in Eric’s report is that “Huntington Beach’s float cost $200,000, although private funds covered the tab.” Huntington Beach is twice the size of Mission Viejo yet spent roughly half as much to promote their beach front city without any taxpayer funds.
Again. Congratulations to Mayor Pringle and the entire Anaheim city council.
email response:
“Kudos to the City of Anaheim…….The Angels and Disneyland are two giantic sources of REVENUE for the City….Promoting the 2010 all star game will bring in another stream of dough ray me….great investment which will be returned in spades.”
Ridiculous waste of money. Isn’t the All Star game already sold out?
Hanson.
You miss the point. Have you heard about Disneyland, the Anaheim Convention Center, Downtown Disney and the Honda Center, (formerly known as Arrowhead Pond)?
The convention center alone has one million visitors attending events every year.
When you must compete with other cities for tourist dollars such as Las Vegas you need to support your city’s merchants and hotels.
My sense is that this is less than one half of one percent of their annual budget.
It’s called “marketing,” a profession I know quite well.
As a fiscal conservative my challenge to the mayor and council, if this is to become an annual expenditure, is to find local merchants who benefit from tourism to do their own fund raising to eventually take over this event as other cities have done for several years.
Let’s design a float for Santa Ana
I nominate Gustavo Arrellano to lead us on this one.
I found the “Ask a Mexican” column recently so I am a new fan.
I say Santa Ana may be able to do some excellent marketing since Mr. Larry Gilbert has just stressed the importance for Anaheim to do so in competing with Vegas and all.
Santa Ana needs to jump in and do their own marketing as well.
I visited “Noche de Altares” in Santa Ana, last Sat. night and my family & I were just speechless over the beauty of expression and the reverence shown by all (culturally speaking) for their loved ones and those that have gone before us– (as a general depiction of the festivities in and of themselves). I don’t know if there were awards given but the
“Mujeres de Juares” float absolutely would take the prize in my eyes.
Back to the subject-Congratulations to Anaheim.
Now in designing a float for Santa Ana-
let’s hear some suggestions?
Just in time.
Let’s not get emotional or sentimental in making decisions on spending taxpayer money.
While Santa Ana’s population is about the same as Anaheim, let’s do the math.
Thirty percent of Anaheim’s revenue is from tourism. That’s the hotel bed tax alone.
Other than the local and federal court houses, a jail and BOS HQ, What tourist destinations exist in Santa Ana today?
Unlike Anaheim, does Santa Ana have hundreds or perhaps thousands of houses yet to be sold?
Setting that aside I think it would be great for your city to create a volunteer, non-profit, group where the community could work together raising funds, designing and building a float for this annual event.
Check out the other CA cities who have entered before to see how much they invested and where the funds came from.
Some cities exhibit to celebrate their 100th birthday. Mission Viejo exhibited on our 20th birthday and didn’t even ask our city funded MV Community Foundation to help us raise funds until after I waved the flag. We ended up spending around 80 percent of our htel bed taxes for two minutes of fame.
I still do not think that our non-profit foundation directly raised any of the money spent on our float last year.
I like JIT’s idea for a different design. Why not make it a giant RINO with a saddle for Pringle? And let his $100 billion bullet train be circulating it like a Lionel set around a Christmas tree. And make sure there’s room for a multi-million dollar white elephant train station.
Check out Pringle’s latest screw job on Orange County: http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-rail13-2009nov13,0,6550006.story. Nice thing about being termed out is that you don’t need to be looking out for your folks anymore.
Just in Time,
Financial sources(total revenues) For Anaheim and Santa Ana from :
-fees and permits
-local taxes
-transfers from(to) other funds
-intergovernmental
-intragovernmental service changes
– all other revenues
for 2008 shows Anaheim to exceed Santa Ana’s by $30 million. This is in spite of Larry Gilberts correct assessment that Santa Ana is not a tourist destination.
Anaheim with relatively the same tax revenues of Santa Ana is able to manage it’s majority Hispanic population, the tourist crowds – in the millions annually, it’s infrastructure, Attract the world series and other types of entertainment, PROVIDE A FLOAT FOR THE ROSE PARADE AS OTHER ORANGE COUNTY CITIES DO and provide public services at a significant higher level than Santa Ana.
Why can Anaheim do all this with a majority Hispanic population and Santa Ana be at the bottom of the barrel in all categories compared to all of the other cities in Orange County?
It is very clear, BAD LEADERSHIP-BAD MANAGEMENT!!!!!!!
SANTA ANA NEEDS NEW LEADERSHIP IN ORDER TO CATCH UP WITH THE OTHER OC CITIES.
Art.
Valid points. No need for me to add anything else.
Hanson.
For the record, even though you are taking this thread off track, I oppose the bullet train. Mayor Pringle has an Agenda as most officials who were elected to get the best deal for their constituents.
The high speed train will be a financial disaster at a time when we are trying to get out from under a huge financial cloud in SAC. And for the millions of citizens who will not ride the train they will see other necessary services cut as we will have a bonded indebtedness hanging over our heads for the next 30-40 years.
If voters pass more Bonds where will the funds come from to pay off that multi billion dollar debt?