Sealy to council
Rethink process for hotel-motel funds
By JIMMY GALVAN Managing Editor

The city of Jasper's dealings with Bob Sealy's McDonald's Big Bash Splash has opened up a new can of worms for the fishing industry in Jasper.

Sealy addressed Jasper's city council Tuesday, Oct. 9 and said the city needs to rethink its process for handing out hotel-motel funds.

"Speaking on behalf of a lot of business people, I need this council to take a look at how these tourism dollars are being looked at and how they are reviewed and how they are dispersed," Sealy said.

Jasper Mayor David Barber said he couldn't comment on Sealy's speech because it was made during the public comments portion of the meeting.

Sealy was originally scheduled on the agenda but had his item removed by mistake by Barber. Sealy requested to be placed on next month's agenda meeting for the council.

Sealy said the problems with the tourism dollars started after the city made the decision to take the tourism duties away from the Jasper Lake Sam Rayburn Area Chamber of Commerce and put it under the city's control.

At the time, the city believed the decision would remove all the politics from the decisions made with the hotel-motel funds.

"The city said the city manager and his review board could do the right job with these funds," Sealy said. "The city also said that the fishing tournaments were still on the agenda and that there would be more fishing tournaments.

"But we have gone backwards since then," Sealy said.

According to Sealy, the hotel-motel tax receipts have increased for the city over the past couple of years.

"But we are not seeing additional events here," Sealy said.

Sealy believes the city should place the tourism duties back with the chamber of commerce.

"It seems to me that the people who are at that chamber have the education and knowledge of what tourism is all about," Sealy said. "That's not taking anything away from Alan Grindstaff, Denise Kelly or Robbie Peek because they know how to handle city money but when it comes to tourism, they need more help or it needs to go back to the people who have the education to do it."

Sealy offered two suggestions to the city council to help remedy this issue.

Sealy's first suggestion was to put the tourism dollars back in the hands of the Jasper Chamber of Commerce.

"They have the knowledge and education to sit down, review and research what it takes to get the right data in order to spend this tax money appropriately," Sealy said.

His second suggestion was to form a broader tourism review committee that would include hotelmotel owners, restaurant owners.

"These people have the knowledge and experience and education on what tourism means and place them with Alan Grindstaff, Denise Kelly and Robbie Peek and create a larger, unbiased review board to handle these cases."

Sealy suggested Gary Collins, chairman of Jasper County Development District #1 in the Rayburn area, Tim Berryman, owner of Catfish Cabin and Richard Carpenter, general manager of Jasper's Holiday Inn, as three prime candidates to add to an expanded review committee.

Sealy said the JCDD#1 recently invested $10,000 for a study with the Texas Parks and Wildlife to conduct an economic study on what fishing tournaments do for the city of Jasper, Jasper County and its businesses.

Todd Driscoll of the Texas Parks and Wildlife, confirmed that the study was paid for the JCDD#1 and should be completed by October of 2009.

"Fishing is not a luxury, it's an industry," Sealy said. "It is a business and needs to be treated like a business and an industry. There are a lot of business people in this town that depend on those fishermen being here.

"We have lost out on several fishing events because of the lack of research and education and knowledge," Sealy said. "If we continue to that, we will continue to hurt these businesses overall. Remember, there are two T's in Jasper County and one is timber and one is tourism. You take away the lake, you take away tourism and we all know the timber business is in Louisiana and not in Jasper."