4 out 5 Oro Valley Tourism Commissioners Resign in 1 week!

Read below about how 4 of the 5 of the inaugural Oro Valley Tourism Commission resigned in 1 week. You will find all 4 resignation letters below, leading off with my own, followed my former TAC chair Anthony D'Angelo, Ms. Sasha Case and Mr. Mark Van Buren. Read on about our massive disappointments.

Dear Council Members, Fellow OV Citizens and members of the media,

You should not be surprised by this missive.  I am joining my fellow commissioners Anthony D’angelo, Sasha Case and Mark Van Buren in resigning from the Tourism Advisory Commission.(a commission that you all voted to create) You will find copies of their letters following mine below.  Right out of the gate, this is NOT about the results of the recent election.  If you paid attention to the meetings we have had and the sad state of affairs at each meeting, you would not say or think such things.

I am not going to repeat the myriad of reasons stated by Tony, Sasha and Mark.  They nailed the reality of the commission on so many fronts.  I don’t how often that 80% of a commission quits in one week, but I am sure it is rare.

The biggest feeling I have is DISAPPOINTMENT. After hearing Mr. Winfield’s flowery words at the volunteer appreciation dinner last December and to quote the beleaguered Town Manager in his November 18th message Season of Gratitude and Thanks  “From our Citizen Volunteer Assistants Program (CVAP) to those that serve on advisory committees, we are deeply grateful for the time, energy and expertise you share with us.”. I can tell you that 4 of the 5 were not feeling gratitude and or much appreciation for 100+ years of experience and expertise the 5 of us brought to that table.

One more inconvenient quote from Mr. Winfield, from last year's State of the Town.  “We’re working with CSL International on a tourism strategy, we’ve launched a citizen advisory commission to guide our efforts,and we’ve hired Tempest to develop new branding and a tourism website.”  If rubberstamping and nodding our heads at staff’s ideas as 2 people try to replace the entire Visit Tucson staff is the Town’s idea of “guide our efforts”, then you good folks have a much different version of the reality of “guide our efforts”.

Anyway, if you finally change staff direction and want to get back to doing tourism correctly for the best benefit of the taxpayers of OV, I am happy to contribute.  Under the current circumstances, it is nigh impossible.  For a Town with a big revenue problem, the disregard of 5 people who truly want to help the town maximize bed tax and sales tax collections is truly sad.  Also, your dismissal of  the local mom and pop restaurants who rely on the tourism dollar to thrive and stay open is truly worrying.

Thanks to Councilwoman Murphy for trying to make this happen.  I would say that the only other person on the council that paid attention to the meetings was Councilwoman Barrett, who I believe directed, with Mary’s support, staff to actually work with the commission. I appreciate that Mary and Melanie actually gave a damn about our input.

I wish you all the best.  We are always here to help. IF it is truly wanted.

If any members of the media or council wish to discuss this, my cell is 520-275-4955 and my email is chris@ltdmedia.net.

Peace and Love,  Chris DeSimone

(the other 3 commission members’ resignation letter below)

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Mayor Winfield and members of the Oro Valley Town Council,

Please accept this email as my resignation from the Oro Valley Tourism Advisory Commission, effective immediately.  I appreciate the opportunity to serve but for a variety of reasons, I believe the time is right for me to move on.

Participation in this commission over its first year of existence has been extremely disappointing.  As stated by Commissioner Case and Commissioner Van Buren in their resignation letters, our impact on decisions related to advancing tourism into Oro Valley has been negligible.  I have the most respect for the four commissioners with whom I served.  We all have unique and tangible skills and experiences the Town could have benefited from using.  The Commission was specifically formed to “review, study and recommend” actions related to advancing Tourism into Oro Valley.  I believe the consensus among commissioners is that little of this purpose has been welcomed or executed.

Within this context, here are just a few of the things that led to my personal decision to resign:

1.     Leisure Travel Management Plan – The Town invested over $150,000 into the development of a plan that provided little data regarding Oro Valley’s strengths and weaknesses or actual economic impact from Tourism.  Its recommendations were generic at best and the Commission’s input was for the most part discounted by staff.  Many of the recommendations appeared disconnected from what already makes Oro Valley special and would require investments with no reference to any beneficial returns.  The fact that Oro Valley has 100 holes of golf was never mentioned and the consultant actually stated that golf is not a significant driver of visitors to Town was disappointing to say the least.  Nor was there much recognition of the Town’s Tennis assets that bring in a number of high dollar tournaments every year.  The reality is that Oro Valley is ranked #2 for Tennis in Arizona with more public tennis courts than any other Arizona community.  The Town Council’s arbitrary decision to remove four of the five “big ideas” without soliciting any feedback from the Tourism Advisory Commission and remaining silence on the Commission’s concerns with the overall report further validate to me that the Commission is not a valued asset in the Town’s decision making.

Furthermore, once the top three recommendations were approved by Town Council, staff chose to ignore our request to discuss next steps to implement them at a scheduled Commission meeting.  This also confirms my perception that our time and talent is neither needed or welcomed.

2.     Visit Tucson – The Commission has been repeatedly accused of advocating for a return to membership in Visit Tucson.  Whether that was a wise decision or not, the Commission respected the Town Council decision to go it alone.  The question we repeatedly asked during the formulation of the Leisure Travel Management Plan was with regard to how can the Town develop and manage a tourism plan that ignores the area in which that Town currently receives well over 60% of its tourism-based tax revenues – corporate, business, convention and group segments.  A significant amount of the business into our two resorts comes from leads supplied by Visit Tucson.  This requires the two resorts to now fund out of their own existing operations Visit Tucson membership at a competitive disadvantage to every other resort in the greater Tucson market.  No tangible effort has been made by the Town to collaborate and coordinate efforts with the resorts and any efforts by the Commission to contribute to such efforts have been rejected.

3.     Destination Marketing Manager Relations – I was called on the carpet by the Mayor, Town Manager and Town Attorney for creating a tone within the Commission meetings that led to the resignation of the Destination Marketing Manager.  It was communicated that our challenges to decision making by staff made the Destination Marketing Manager feel her job was threatened.  I have reviewed videos of past meetings and can not find any evidence of disrespect to the Destination Marketing Manager.  To the contrary commissioners went out of their way to compliment her work.  Any challenges to decision making by staff would seem to be consistent with our “review, study and recommend” purpose.

On the other hand, the Commission was not asked for any input into the design or content of the Town’s tourism app, tourism brand development or tourism website.  Costs of these exceeded $200,000 and the commission only received presentations of the completed products for recognition.  This further supports my belief that the Commission is not considered a credible resource to the staff managing tourism efforts.

4.     Stakeholder Interactions – There are a number of businesses and organizations that contribute and benefit from Tourism into Oro Valley.  The Tourism Advisory Commission had no involvement in identifying potential stakeholders or engaging with stakeholders to advance Tourism into the Town.  As Mark Van Buren stated in his resignation letter, he was reprimanded for even contacting Oro Valley hotel general managers to better understand their perspectives of the current state of business.  We expressed concern over the lack of participation from stakeholders in meetings with staff and offered to help encourage attendance of stakeholders to the Explore Oro Valley website launch.  Both efforts were ignored and out of what could have been as many as 175 stakeholders, only 14 attended the website launch.  

5.     Steam Pump Ranch Activation – Among the three top recommendations the Tourism Advisory Commission offered to the Town Council, were hosting events and festivals and expanding on the use of Steam Pump Ranch.  The Commission was prepared to discuss this at a future meeting but the request was denied.  On my own I contacted the Oro Valley Historical Society with an idea.  Whether the idea is a good one or not, is not the point.  The idea was welcomed and the feedback led me to believe that little or no effort has been made by staff to engage the Oro Valley Historical Society in exploring how to act on the recommendations involving Steam Pump Ranch.  I come from the business world, if there is no urgency, then there is no importance.  When will any execution of recommendations begin and who, if anyone will be involved outside staff?

6.     Current Communications to Commission Members – The Town has now approved the Leisure Travel Management Plan, it has recognized the Top Three recommendations to execute, it has hired a new Destination Marketing Manager, and it has launched the exploreorovalley.org website.  There has been no communications to commissioners regarding execution of the Leisure Travel Management Plan.  We received an announcement of the hiring of the Destination Marketing Manager but no invitation to meet the person.  Two Commissioners are scheduled to attend a regional tourism conference but no objectives for the participation have been communicated.  No data regarding use or impact on tourism from the website has been communicated.  The Director of Community and Economic Development has indicated that we have no role in any of this work unless specifically requested by Town Council and it does not appear that council members other than our single advocate, liaison Council member Mary Murphy sees any value in our existence. 

7.     Communications from the newly elected Town Council members – I sent the mayor-elect and three council members-elect a congratulatory email and asked for their thoughts on tourism.  Only council member-elect Rhonda Pina responded and we had a thoughtful conversation.  I must assume the others are busy and that Tourism and the Tourism Advisory Commission are not among their priorities at this point.

8.     Misreported Bed Tax Information – At our May Tourism Advisory Commission Meeting we were presented bed tax information through April 2026.  The April information shared was prior to the posting by the Town’s finance department of unaudited April financials.  When presented, the April bed tax appeared to show significant improvements over prior year and outside the current year trend.  We were told it was due in part to back taxes collected.  When actual unaudited financial reports were published, the numbers did not match, not even close.  It is my belief that any investments by the Town of our residents tax dollars into tourism efforts must have accurate data to assure a reasonable return.  This is why we asked to see bed tax detail.  No effort by the Town Manager or Community and Economic Development Director were made to acknowledge the error or explain the discrepancies.  I did communicate with the Chief Financial Director directly who confirmed that the data reported was both inconsistently presented and incorrect.  The issue for me is not whether an error occurred but that staff does not believe it important to communicate the error to the Commission. This further leads me to believe that our role has little significance to Town government.

9.     Campaign Rhetoric – During the recent campaign some winning candidates attempted to temper support for Tourism by assuring voters their position would be to protect Oro Valley from becoming Sedona or Las Vegas.  As a commissioner I believed a thoughtful approach to promoting tourism into Oro Valley involves better promoting the Town’s current assets to attract outside dollars.  It should not require large public investments in more staff, facilities or programs.  No one is suggesting we need to transform Oro Valley into some Disney like destination.  It is simply to recognize that with better collaboration and coordination with our private sector we can capitalize on our location in the Sonoran Desert, our climate, our clean air and safe community to welcome people who don’t live within our borders to spend money more than they are already doing.  As long as we are sales tax-based for most of our revenues, encouraging visitors is a good thing.  It won’t add significantly to demand on our water resources or traffic and they will go home. Creating fear among residents regarding any promotion of Tourism has made me believe this Commission may not be taken seriously by the Town Council any time soon.

I respectfully ask the Town Council to reevaluate their reasons to form the Tourism Advisory Commission and what role they desire from appointed commissioners.  Oro Valley is blessed with a number of talented residents who can support the Town’s efforts to promote and benefit from a robust Tourism effort.  I am confident there are plenty of willing residents to take our place.  I believe your responsibility is to assure those that those that do volunteer their time and effort are treated with respect and provided true opportunity to contribute. 

Sincerely,

Tony D’Angelo

breakthrough50@me.com

303-472-4690

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Dear fellow Tourism Advisory Commissioners; Tony, Mark, Malarie and Christopher,

After much ruminating, I have decided to tender my resignation as a commissioner on TAC. This decision, which is in no way political, has been on my mind for several months now and feels right. My mind is made up. 

I will be writing to the town council, but wanted to share this news with all of you beforehand. 

I have been dismayed at the way, I feel, we have been treated as a commission for most of our months of service. I’ve been disheartened to hear that our chair, Tony, along with others on the commission have been called into question, attended “commission jail” for the mere fact that they have challenged some of the initiatives and plans put forth to us by the economic director who, I believe resents our questioning and our advice. Chairman D’Angelo, along with the rest of us, has been fully committed to his role as an advocate and voice for the townspeople and he has put in an inordinate amount of time to research the recent plans presented to the commission during our monthly meetings. The fact that the word advisory is used in our titles seems almost humorous as our advice seems to fall on deaf ears, is often ignored, not brought to council, discounted. 

I now believe this commission was formed primarily to check off a box in the task list of the Strategic Leisure Travel Destination Plan, specifically# 4, “Clarify tourism governance, staffing, and stakeholder engagement structure. Create a formal tourism leadership platform with inclusive stakeholder representation from hotels, small businesses, residents, and nonprofits.” 

 I was the least qualified person on this commission. It troubled me to see the effort and time spent by my fellow commissioners to research, advise, question and debate, met with negativity, dismissal and and what I perceive as disrespect. 

It was shared with me that the resignation of Crystal  was due to her unhappiness regarding the commissions behavior towards her. I find this accusation absolutely unacceptable on the part of those who spread this false information, smearing our commission in the process. The fact that chairman D’Angelo was called in to be reprimanded by our mayor and town manager over this untruth is deeply disturbing to me. 

I really feel that this commission has tried and tried again to be and do what was implied when we accepted these volunteer positions. As is all of yours, my time  is valuable, I volunteer in my community with a great deal of commitment and I wish to spend my time and energy in a constructive, productive environment. A place where our voice and knowledge is appreciated and respected. I will be rejoining the board and continue my deep engagement at Tohono Chul Park a place I consider to be the jewel in the crown of Oro Valley.

I have learned much from each of you and hold you all in high regard. I will miss being together as we have each month and going forth, if any of you choose to remain on this commission, if it continues to exist, that in the future, there will be more effort on the part of staff and council to understand that when an earnest and learned group of people come together with the best interests of the community in mind, they should be heard. 

Best wishes to all of you and thank you for your service to our town.

Sasha

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My name is Mark Van Buren and I have been on the Tourism Advisory Commission for a year. I am writing to you today to resign my position on the Commission effective immediately.  I joined the Commission with the idea I would be able to contribute to increasing tourism in Oro Valley to the benefit of the Town, the residents, and visitors by using my extensive experience in the hospitality industry.

I can honestly say that serving on this Commission has been one of the most frustrating endeavors in my career and the reason for that is that I have been allowed to contribute very little and when I do I feel it falls on deaf ears.

In light of this, I will give you several bullet points to demonstrate my frustration trying to increase tourism in Oro valley.

01)                    It is obvious to me and others that the Town of Oro Valley left Visit Tucson prematurely. Certainly, the Town eventually could operate their own DMO but to drop Visit Tucson without having a formulated game plan to move forward Immediately made little sense. Each time it was brought up in our meetings we were told by Mr. Melcher that the Town Council and Mayor had already approved the change and that we weren't going to discuss it any further. I would think that Mayor and Council would appreciate the members of the TAC’s opinion on this matter but we were never given the opportunity. The two resorts became partners with Visit Tucson despite the Town dropping them which indicates they see the value in Visit Tucson.  They are the only two resorts paying for membership to Visit Tucson directly versus from the bed taxes generated.  This puts them at a significant competitive disadvantage in a very difficult market.

02)                    The Town of Oro Valley has failed to foster a relationship with the two resorts and three hotels in Oro Valley.   I was a Vice President of Operations for three major hotel companies as well as the General Manager for the Tucson Marriott University Park for a decade.  Shortly after my appointment to the Commission, I visited the two resorts and three hotels in the Town of Oro Valley, not representing the town but as a private member of the town just to gauge how business was for their hotels and to see how they felt about the Town. What was interesting in visiting the three hotels that are not resorts was that  they appreciated being in Oro Valley but they felt they had no relationship with the town. Paul Melcher found out that I had visited these hotels and told me that I can't represent the town and go out and do this to which I replied I didn't represent the town, I represented myself as a former hotelier and was just gathering information.

03)                    The town of Oro Valley paid CSL International $153,000 for 20 recommendations and 5 “big ideas” regarding tourism. With all due respect to CSL International, the plan that they created was a boilerplate plan that could be used in any city in the United States. Certainly, that is my opinion, but my opinion is based on 50 years in the hospitality business and formulating many plans like this. There are 100 holes of golf in Oro Valley and the plan did not even mention golf as a tourism amenity!  The plan had very few specifics and as a tourism professional I always wanted to know what the objective would cost and what are the specific benefits including expected revenues, this plan lacked these details. I honestly believe that the members of TAC could have developed a plan that would have been Oro Valley specific and much more comprehensive.

I appreciate the opportunity to have served on this Commission and I have the utmost respect for all of my fellow Commissioners and I only wish we had been given the opportunity to contribute more information to Mayor and Council so that you could formulate a solid plan for Tourism in Oro Valley.  I have lived in Oro Valley for 18 years and I want nothing more for the Town to be successful.  Thank you for your time.