Consultant to Be Hired to Help Form Visitors Bureau : Promotions: Lancaster and Palmdale representatives agree on new steps to bring tourism, conventions and filmmakers to both high desert cities.

City officials and business leaders said Friday they are committed to making yet another attempt at setting up a visitors, convention and film bureau for the Antelope Valley.

Previous efforts to form an organization to lure tourists, business conferences and filmmakers to the high desert have collapsed because of squabbling between Lancaster and Palmdale.

But the new Antelope Valley Regional Partnership, a panel made up of representatives from both cities, decided this week to hire a consultant to help set up the bureau. It would be designed to boost spending at hotels, restaurants and other businesses in the area.

“I think this partnership is making a move in the right direction,” said Bernie Longjohn, president of the Palmdale Chamber of Commerce. “It’s going to have to be a give-and-take program that’s designed to benefit the whole Antelope Valley, not just Lancaster or Palmdale.”

Longjohn, a member of the partnership panel, said the group has agreed to pay a consultant up to $20,000 to learn how a visitors and convention bureau could best serve the area.

The panel wants the study to be complete in 90 days because Lancaster and Palmdale city councils are expected to approve their fiscal 1995-96 budgets in June, and proponents want each budget to include $100,000 for the new bureau.

Most of the money is expected to come from a change in the way transient occupancy taxes--better known as bed taxes--are collected at local hotels and motels. Lancaster charges 7% of the room rate, and Palmdale charges 10%, but the levy is waived for federal employees or guests working on government projects. Under new rules in both cities, the tax would no longer be waived.

This change is expected to generate Lancaster’s full $100,000 share for the visitors bureau, but only $60,000 toward Palmdale’s. Palmdale Mayor Jim Ledford said he will need the consultant’s report to persuade his City Council to provide the rest of the money.

“I have to bridge that other $40,000, and I cannot do that without something that outlines the role of the visitors and film bureau,” Ledford said.

The consultant will be asked to propose a bureau that can market Palmdale and Lancaster in an even-handed manner.

Lancaster Chamber of Commerce officials last year suggested that they oversee a visitors bureau, but Palmdale officials balked, fearing their city would not receive enough attention.

Lancaster Councilman George Runner, who co-chairs the Regional Partnership, said the panel wants to avoid any perception of favoritism this time.

“The two chambers will be an integral part” of the bureau, he said. “I don’t think you’re going to see one chamber take the lead and be the visitors and convention bureau.”