San Pedro Gets Promise But No Action on Bid for Bed Taxes

San Pedro Peninsula Chamber of Commerce officials, along with their friends in the hotel business, were girded for battle last month, set to make an unusual pitch to get back a share of hotel bed taxes collected by the city of Los Angeles in the seaside community.

The proposal, drafted by the chamber and supported by City Councilwoman Joan Milke Flores, would send 9% of hotel transient occupancy taxes back to San Pedro, for use by the chamber in advertising the community as a tourist destination. But after lining up troops to argue for the long-shot plan at a Feb. 14 meeting of the Community and Economic Development Committee, the bed tax proposal was inadvertently omitted from the agenda, said chamber and council representatives.

“So far, they haven’t rescheduled it. We knew this was going to be a hot potato, but we thought we would at least get a hearing on it,” Leron Gubler, executive director of the chamber, said Friday.

City Councilman Robert Farrell, who chairs the Community and Economic Development Committee, said last week that he prefers to hold a committee meeting in San Pedro to discuss the proposal, along with other Harbor area economic issues, with residents.

“This idea is worthy for us to discuss. I intend to set the hearing for some time in mid-April. There is nothing intrinsic in the issue causing the delay. . . , “ Farrell said.

Los Angeles annually collects about $70 million through a 12% hotel transient occupancy tax--the bed tax. Almost 60% of that money is used to improve public safety, public works and recreation citywide. No money is earmarked for local entities.

About $6 million is given to the Greater Los Angeles Visitors and Convention Bureau, which spends it to promote tourism. However, the bureau does not divide up taxes to highlight specific areas, such as San Pedro, and uses the money instead to showcase the entire city.

Chamber officials say San Pedro, which dangles like a pendulum 23 miles from downtown Los Angeles, gets short shrift when it comes to promotion.

“We get very little spinoff from the visitors’s bureau, which is centered downtown,” Gubler said. “How are we going to create an identity for ourselves when we are merely a footnote in a publication about all of Southern California? It seems logical that people directly affected are best able to promote the area.”

In 1988, chamber officials say, $386,000 was collected by the city in hotel bed taxes in San Pedro. But with new hotels opening soon, chamber officials anticipate San Pedro could contribute nearly $1 million in bed taxes to city coffers. What the chamber wants is to spend 9% of that just promoting the San Pedro area.

Some city officials criticize the plan, fearing it could open a Pandora’s box if other Los Angeles communities seek a greater share of locally collected taxes.

In a memo sent to Farrell before the scheduled February hearing of the bed tax proposal, City Administrative Officer Keith Comrie wrote: “We cannot support diverting a portion of any tax . . . to the communities which generate the revenue.”

San Pedro was annexed by Los Angeles in 1909 to give the city control over the lucrative Port of Los Angeles. But in recent years, shipbuilding and canning, once the mainstays of the port community, have had drastic declines. San Pedro has turned to tourism to keep dollars flowing into the area.

Within the next year, San Pedro expects to open three new hotels, increasing by 150% the number of available rooms in the area.

“Our major priority last year was to get tourist facilities and hotels. We have achieved that, but now we have to fill those rooms,” Gubler said.

If the unusual plan is approved, San Pedro hotel officials say the chamber’s Tourism Council would use the money--potentially $90,000 a year--in a number of ways.

“We could produce a directory with advertising, have a video made about attractions in San Pedro, attend trade shows. . . . Right now, travelers staying in the area before embarking on cruises stay at the airport,” said Jane Walton, director of sales and marketing for the Sheraton San Pedro hotel, which is to open in May.

San Pedro tourism promoters have always said that the area is ideally located for visitors to Los Angeles: far enough from crowded, smoggy downtown, but still close to such attractions as Disneyland and Hollywood.

Everyone concedes it is an uphill political fight to get the money, particularly with other areas of Los Angeles watching the San Pedro campaign in hopes of imitating it if it is successful.

Flores, who is backing the plan, said: “I’m not so sure it is a bad idea to help the community in trying to do some self-promotion.”