Officials in Oxnard Vote to Promote Tourist Visits : Recreation: Council agrees to reopen visitors bureau. A proposed bed tax hike will help pay for the center.

Hoping to establish Oxnard as a vacation mecca, officials Tuesday agreed to resurrect the city’s tourism bureau and boost the city’s bed tax to help pay for it.

City Council members unanimously voted to join with hotels and other tourist-dependent businesses to reopen the bureau, the victim of budget cuts two years ago. Although council members have expressed approval for the plan, no final action has been taken. The council stopped short of setting aside a specific amount of start-up money for the tourism center, saying that they need to further explore how much upfront cash is needed.

“If we plan this right, it could be considered a major investment by the city,” Councilman Michael Plisky said. “I was extremely appalled at the idea that it was abolished in the first place. I think it showed a lack of vision on behalf of the council to do that.”

Since the tourism bureau folded in 1991, Oxnard has seen hotel bed tax revenue slump a total of $290,000, twice the drop experienced by neighboring Ventura, which has a visitors bureau. Oxnard also has lost sales tax revenue with fewer tourists dollars spent in the city, officials said.

“There has been a minimal effort on the part of the city to answer visitor telephone calls and inquiries,” Economic Development Director Steve Kinney told the council Tuesday. “We want to get Oxnard back on the map.”

Kinney has been meeting with the Chamber of Commerce to find ways to transform Oxnard into a center of tourism and travel.

As part of that push, city officials and business leaders agreed that a new tourism bureau was key to the effort to promote Oxnard as a vacation destination.

“It was the wrong thing to do, to cut it out in the first place, because Oxnard lost its place in the market,” said Victor Marzorati, managing director of Casa Sirena Marina Resort.

As proposed, the new agency would be called the Greater Oxnard and Harbors Tourism Bureau. City staff has proposed that the bureau be funded by $75,000 from the city and $75,000 from hotels and related businesses.

The rest of the money would come from a proposed increase in the city’s bed tax--from 9% to 10%--that would generate an estimated $148,000 a year.

Marzorati told council members Tuesday that he and other hotel operators are willing to support the bed tax boost.

“We are against increased taxes,” he said, “but if it’s going to mean a successful bureau, we’ll go along with it.”

Council members and business representatives agreed that Oxnard’s previous tourism bureau tried to do too much with its limited resources and suffered from too much interference from city employees.

“There is enough blame to go around,” said Michael Koutnik, longtime director of Oxnard’s now defunct Visitors and Convention Bureau. “But we need to fix the problems, not spend our time affixing blame.”

Koutnik added, “We need to be on line quickly so we don’t lose another season.”

Council members said they expect to easily recoup money sunk into reopening the tourism bureau in the way of increased sales taxes and other revenues for the city.

“I think we need to invest in areas that could provide us the greatest return for our money,” Councilman Andres Herrera said.