SIMI VALLEY : Visitor’s Information Funds on Block Again

As the Simi Valley City Council gets ready to begin its annual budget-cutting process, the first item on the chopping block is a familiar one--a proposal to cut funding for a visitor’s information program run by the Chamber of Commerce at city expense.

Every year at budget time, city staff presents the council with a book of proposed cuts. And every year, the visitor information program is at or near the top of the list of suggested trims.

“If you were the staff, wouldn’t you recommend cutting someone else’s program?” Mayor Greg Stratton joked Friday.

But Nancy Bender, the chamber’s executive director, isn’t laughing.

“Why it’s so high on the list? I don’t think I can really answer that,” Bender said. “It would certainly cost the city more to operate that program. They would have to have at least one or two full-time people on it.”

Last year, the chamber requested $56,200 to fund the visitor-outreach service and ended the budget process with only $45,000. This year, the chamber is seeking $57,500.

City staff has given the council the option of fully funding the program, giving the chamber $45,000 again, cutting the chamber’s budget back to $22,500 or doing away with the service altogether.

According to chamber statistics, the program last year responded to 19,000 telephone requests for information about the city and 3,600 requests by visitors to the chamber office. It also distributed 600 information packets.

Bender said the chamber gets about 80 calls a day from prospective residents or visitors looking for data on the city, schools, parks, weather, transportation, cable television and the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library.

For his part, Stratton said he was sure the council would come up with some way to support the chamber’s efforts, probably by awarding the same $45,000 it did last year.

“I think it’s something that is needed,” he said. “The calls are already going to the chamber. That’s the place people think to call. So the question becomes, does she answer the phone (and) say, ‘Call the city’ or does she answer the phone and give them the information? We think it’s more effective for everybody if she gives them the information.”