At this reset of time and energy it is now the opportunity to take the community back from tourism toFino. Tourism toFinos goal for the last 10 or so years has been nothing but get more people here, advertise, brand, get those thousands of people here every year regardless of what effect it has upon the community.. Don't know how it happened but it appears to me that tourism toFino was given a carte blanche to do whatever it felt like.
Tourism Tofino is like a kid eating ice cream. They want more and more and more until they Barf. Guess what Tourism Tofino folks, you have overdone it so far as the residents are concerned. it is time for you to do the Barf and rethink your excessive ways. More as the kid eating all the ice cream found out is not always a good thing.
The same goes for the district of Tofino sponsorship of this Barf Party. The money is no longer coming in this year. It’s time for spending cuts and back to the basics otherwise there will not be a recovery because there won’t be anyone left living here year round.
Perhaps we should allow Tourism Tofino to proceed with their insane more, more, more policies........ so long as the tax structure can be re-written in a way that arranges for the tourism sector to pay for the new sewage treatment facility, the upgrades to the water system, and all of the affordable staff housing that their industry requires. The residents of Tofino can then take advantage of these infrastructure upgrades, as compensation for the inconvenience of having all these visitors and the damage they do to the community and area.
BS 12:30. It's chicken and egg sort of but the province was pushing the tourist tax on tofino a fair a while before VRs became a popular investors item. They thought we were stupid for not jumping on board and being able to use all that money for adtvertising so we could get more tourists. The district, for a while, did not want to jump on the tourist bandwagon because we didn't have the infrastructure to support unlimited visitors. Somewhere along the line that all changed. Now we have too many VRs, too many tourists, not enough infrastructure, a lot of unnecessary decorations and flowerbeds, and not a dime to improve infrastructure. And since so much time and energy has been devoted to keeping tourism tofino happy affordable housing is still a long ways away.
The fact of the matter is that all the resource based industries left Tofino, luckily tourist has replaced them Practically every city in BC knows the value of tourism and promotes it through organizations like Tourism Tofino. The tourism industry supports millions of families and benefits cities around the world. Blame zoning bylaws in Tofino that have allowed VR's to flood the market with inaccess of 500 beds for nightly rentals, if you want something to blame. Hopefully none of the folks complaining benifit from tourist related jobs!
Yes tourism did replace resource-based industries. And it was the only game in town. That's not the point. Tofino has never needed to advertise in order to attract tourists. No advertising necessary. Blanket advertising for people to just come to Tofino is stupid. It brings us aimless consumers. Many thousands of aimless consumers. Tofino would've been much better off without that type of tourism advertising and promotion with no specific intent other than more is better. More is it better when it overloads our systems i.e. parking in the downtown core, transportation, sewer and water, accommodations and so on. The RMI money if you bother to look around seems like it was intended to make the downtown area into a hipster theme park as opposed to doing something that would ameliorate some of the overloading that we experience as residents. More is not better. The analogy that keeps coming back to me is the fisherman who caught so many fish he sank his own boat. A true story. More is not better.
"all resource based industries left Tofino" Untrue. There is still a fishing and aquaculture sector. Locals still go crabbing, Salmon fishing as a livelihood has been reduced to vapours, mostly for native openings, and what remains of sport fishing. Oysters are still an important lively hood to locals. Salmon farming is economically important, employs lots of locals and regional folk, but gets shit on by a lot of people. Council does not support it. But these things don't seem to register on the minds of local politicians. These industries have become almost invisible. Council rejected recognizing an Aquaculture Festival, provincial wide, because they hated fish farming. So sad because these activities could hold an important key to keeping Tofino and tourism in Tofino grounded and real.
Forestry didn't leave. The traditional large corporate entities where driven out, had there TFL holdings stripped. All to save the community from immanent demise, from cut and run. This may have all been for a good purpose, but in the rush, a more local scaled back, more sustainable industry was not imagined by the Tofino leadership. In it's headlong rush to "save the environment" First Nations ended up with the lions share of the cutting opportunities and this has not resulted in much of an economic opportunity for most in the region Native or non Native. Then Mayor of Tofino, Scott Fraser, wanted nothing to do with forestry activities for the area. He crowed about Tofino's booming tourist economy. Rushed through zoning amendments around B&B rights. We didn't need any help in a time of transition. "Fastest growing municipality in the Province" was his mantra. While Ucluelet was securing a small area for forestry for themselves, that generates a profit for the Ucluelet municipality, as well as employment. Wouldn't that look good on /Tofino right now. Very short sited on the part of Tofino leadership at the time. Now they want economic diversity. Again, a small sustainable local forestry sector would generate authenticity revenue and jobs and counter the artificial "Disneyland" perception Tofino has created. But who on council would be interested? It would be so politically incorrect.
At first it was the business community that rejected the "bed tax" that currently sustains Tourism Tofino. "We already have too many taxes" was the cry from the then Chamber of Commerce. Again, short sighted, but eventually they came around and now years later (covid excepted) we hurtle down a single minded path as a Global Destination" as monolithic and stupid as the single use historic forestry sector ever was. And now the complaints of those archaic small town business folk would be correct. We have too many taxes and the town is facing immanent demise. Again
Politicians who have offered the community binary choices, "Good vs Evil", Tourism vs Forestry, the Environment vs Aquaculture, Development vs Preservation, Tofino Housing Committee housing vs private sector development, whatever the issue, seem to gain short term political success from polarizing the voter base, but to the long term detriment of the community. The thinking has been lousy when you are actually dealing with multifaceted decisions, and complex problem solving that require a broader perspective and balance.
Ucluelet has announced that 2020 business licence fees will be $.00. Tofino, the greedy bureaucrats, mayor and council, on the other hand, will not eliminate nor even reduce the business licence fees here in Tofino. Their reasoning, if you read between the lines, "We've already spent the money".
Then they send out a letter thanking businesses for closing as a part of the community effort to stop the spread. Enough to gag ya.
I say that if you own a business in Tofino, GO AHEAD AND OPEN! You're paying for the right to do so, and you're not getting any assistance from your local government, if you support your community. You gotta fend for yourself. All businesses should open. NOW. Air bnb's, VRBO's, tours, surf shops, motels..... OPEN 'Em up.
All of this "closure" stuff is voluntary. OPEN YOUR DOORS!!
So business is "part of the community" when it is time to close up shop to save lives due to Covid", "Thanks for doing your part." But the same business is not worthy of help when it comes to taxes and fees when no one has been open or working. No, it's palliative care for you. Those are the risks of private enterprise you suckers.
Seriously, it seems like it is the DOT that is not part of the community anymore. They have placed themselves above you.
Not one dollar out of anyone's pocket has been sacrificed at the DOT. Their use of reserve funds to reduce the C&I part of your tax is just borrowing from the future to save face today. The rest of us will have to pay it back going forward. It has cost them nothing.
Socialism for the public employees at town hall, rugged individualism for the rest of us.
Yes the reason Ucluelet can't afford to give a break here and there is because they get a $1 million check from the community forest activity. regularly. And so does first nations. Tofino doesn't get anything because the extremists don't want anything to do with the evil word logging. So all of the imported extremists, some of them paid by God only knows who, pretty well find something wrong with everything because they're paid to. And there's never an issue studied long enough to actually give it some breadth of meaning besides black and white... Or some brain dead consultants dream up solutions from mars for the councils to implement and were stuck with that. this way of doing things leaves us dumb
At this reset of time and energy it is now the opportunity to take the community back from tourism toFino. Tourism toFinos goal for the last 10 or so years has been nothing but get more people here, advertise, brand, get those thousands of people here every year regardless of what effect it has upon the community.. Don't know how it happened but it appears to me that tourism toFino was given a carte blanche to do whatever it felt like.
ReplyDeleteTourism Tofino is like a kid eating ice cream. They want more and more and more until they Barf.
ReplyDeleteGuess what Tourism Tofino folks, you have overdone it so far as the residents are concerned.
it is time for you to do the Barf and rethink your excessive ways.
More as the kid eating all the ice cream found out is not always a good thing.
The same goes for the district of Tofino sponsorship of this Barf Party. The money is no longer coming in this year.
It’s time for spending cuts and back to the basics otherwise there will not be a recovery because there won’t be anyone left living here year round.
Perhaps we should allow Tourism Tofino to proceed with their insane more, more, more policies........ so long as the tax structure can be re-written in a way that arranges for the tourism sector to pay for the new sewage treatment facility, the upgrades to the water system, and all of the affordable staff housing that their industry requires. The residents of Tofino can then take advantage of these infrastructure upgrades, as compensation for the inconvenience of having all these visitors and the damage they do to the community and area.
ReplyDeleteyes. totally agree with 7:55
ReplyDeleteThis isn't tourism Tofino's doing...it is the district supported by all the VR's. please look at the details.
ReplyDeleteBS 12:30.
ReplyDeleteIt's chicken and egg sort of but the province was pushing the tourist tax on tofino a fair a while before VRs became a popular investors item. They thought we were stupid for not jumping on board and being able to use all that money for adtvertising so we could get more tourists. The district, for a while, did not want to jump on the tourist bandwagon because we didn't have the infrastructure to support unlimited visitors. Somewhere along the line that all changed. Now we have too many VRs, too many tourists, not enough infrastructure, a lot of unnecessary decorations and flowerbeds, and not a dime to improve infrastructure. And since so much time and energy has been devoted to keeping tourism tofino happy affordable housing is still a long ways away.
The fact of the matter is that all the resource based industries left Tofino, luckily tourist has replaced them Practically every city in BC knows the value of tourism and promotes it through organizations like Tourism Tofino. The tourism industry supports millions of families and benefits cities around the world. Blame zoning bylaws in Tofino that have allowed VR's to flood the market with inaccess of 500 beds for nightly rentals, if you want something to blame. Hopefully none of the folks complaining benifit from tourist related jobs!
ReplyDeleteYes tourism did replace resource-based industries. And it was the only game in town. That's not the point.
ReplyDeleteTofino has never needed to advertise in order to attract tourists. No advertising necessary. Blanket advertising for people to just come to Tofino is stupid. It brings us aimless consumers. Many thousands of aimless consumers. Tofino would've been much better off without that type of tourism advertising and promotion with no specific intent other than more is better.
More is it better when it overloads our systems i.e. parking in the downtown core, transportation, sewer and water, accommodations and so on.
The RMI money if you bother to look around seems like it was intended to make the downtown area into a hipster theme park as opposed to doing something that would ameliorate some of the overloading that we experience as residents.
More is not better. The analogy that keeps coming back to me is the fisherman who caught so many fish he sank his own boat. A true story. More is not better.
"all resource based industries left Tofino" Untrue.
ReplyDeleteThere is still a fishing and aquaculture sector. Locals still go crabbing, Salmon fishing as a livelihood has been reduced to vapours, mostly for native openings, and what remains of sport fishing. Oysters are still an important lively hood to locals. Salmon farming is economically important, employs lots of locals and regional folk, but gets shit on by a lot of people. Council does not support it. But these things don't seem to register on the minds of local politicians. These industries have become almost invisible. Council rejected recognizing an Aquaculture Festival, provincial wide, because they hated fish farming. So sad because these activities could hold an important key to keeping Tofino and tourism in Tofino grounded and real.
Forestry didn't leave. The traditional large corporate entities where driven out, had there TFL holdings stripped. All to save the community from immanent demise, from cut and run. This may have all been for a good purpose, but in the rush, a more local scaled back, more sustainable industry was not imagined by the Tofino leadership. In it's headlong rush to "save the environment" First Nations ended up with the lions share of the cutting opportunities and this has not resulted in much of an economic opportunity for most in the region Native or non Native. Then Mayor of Tofino, Scott Fraser, wanted nothing to do with forestry activities for the area. He crowed about Tofino's booming tourist economy. Rushed through zoning amendments around B&B rights. We didn't need any help in a time of transition. "Fastest growing municipality in the Province" was his mantra. While Ucluelet was securing a small area for forestry for themselves, that generates a profit for the Ucluelet municipality, as well as employment. Wouldn't that look good on /Tofino right now. Very short sited on the part of Tofino leadership at the time. Now they want economic diversity. Again, a small sustainable local forestry sector would generate authenticity revenue and jobs and counter the artificial "Disneyland" perception Tofino has created. But who on council would be interested? It would be so politically incorrect.
At first it was the business community that rejected the "bed tax" that currently sustains Tourism Tofino. "We already have too many taxes" was the cry from the then Chamber of Commerce. Again, short sighted, but eventually they came around and now years later (covid excepted) we hurtle down a single minded path as a Global Destination" as monolithic and stupid as the single use historic forestry sector ever was. And now the complaints of those archaic small town business folk would be correct. We have too many taxes and the town is facing immanent demise. Again
Politicians who have offered the community binary choices, "Good vs Evil", Tourism vs Forestry, the Environment vs Aquaculture, Development vs Preservation, Tofino Housing Committee housing vs private sector development, whatever the issue, seem to gain short term political success from polarizing the voter base, but to the long term detriment of the community. The thinking has been lousy when you are actually dealing with multifaceted decisions, and complex problem solving that require a broader perspective and balance.
Ucluelet has announced that 2020 business licence fees will be $.00.
ReplyDeleteTofino, the greedy bureaucrats, mayor and council, on the other hand, will not eliminate nor even reduce the business licence fees here in Tofino. Their reasoning, if you read between the lines, "We've already spent the money".
Then they send out a letter thanking businesses for closing as a part of the community effort to stop the spread. Enough to gag ya.
I say that if you own a business in Tofino, GO AHEAD AND OPEN! You're paying for the right to do so, and you're not getting any assistance from your local government, if you support your community. You gotta fend for yourself. All businesses should open. NOW. Air bnb's, VRBO's, tours, surf shops, motels..... OPEN 'Em up.
All of this "closure" stuff is voluntary. OPEN YOUR DOORS!!
So business is "part of the community" when it is time to close up shop to save lives due to Covid", "Thanks for doing your part." But the same business is not worthy of help when it comes to taxes and fees when no one has been open or working. No, it's palliative care for you. Those are the risks of private enterprise you suckers.
ReplyDeleteSeriously, it seems like it is the DOT that is not part of the community anymore. They have placed themselves above you.
Not one dollar out of anyone's pocket has been sacrificed at the DOT. Their use of reserve funds to reduce the C&I part of your tax is just borrowing from the future to save face today. The rest of us will have to pay it back going forward. It has cost them nothing.
Socialism for the public employees at town hall, rugged individualism for the rest of us.
Yes the reason Ucluelet can't afford to give a break here and there is because they get a $1 million check from the community forest activity. regularly. And so does first nations. Tofino doesn't get anything because the extremists don't want anything to do with the evil word logging. So all of the imported extremists, some of them paid by God only knows who, pretty well find something wrong with everything because they're paid to. And there's never an issue studied long enough to actually give it some breadth of meaning besides black and white... Or some brain dead consultants dream up solutions from mars for the councils to implement and were stuck with that.
ReplyDeletethis way of doing things leaves us dumb