St. Regis Visitor Information Center continues fight for funds
The fight to keep the St. Regis Visitor Information Center open continued on Friday during a regular meeting of the Mineral County Commissioners.
Due to statewide budget cuts, the St. Regis VIC was informed late last year that they would need to apply for required training in order to receive up to $5,000 in funds. While the $5,000 is significantly less than the VIC received in past years, representatives of the center still applied for the training only to be informed via email that St. Regis will not receive funding.
“Instead, many of the populated centers near the center of Montana were selected and some other gateway communities like St. Regis were shunned,” Glenn Koepke, St. Regis Community Council member said. “The state never acknowledged our application nor offered any regrets for not having selected us.”
In response to the rejection, Koepke began working with the county commissioners on drafting a letter in support of the St. Regis VIC.
Koepke and St. Regis Community Council President John Cheesman were at the county commissioners meeting Friday to go over the draft of the letter and discuss plans for who to send it to and how to further garner support for the VIC.
“For some reason they don’t understand the importance of St. Regis as a gateway community that supports all of Montana,” Koepke said. “Cindy (Grimm) and I worked on revising a cover letter for the commissioners that is a little stronger and tries to present our case a little more strongly that this visitors information center is really important to the state and shouldn’t be overlooked.”
County Commissioner Roman Zylawy then read the draft of the letter, which opens by saying the commissioners, as “leaders” of the community, are “responsible to find solutions to many problems and we find this one very challenging.”
“The historic funding of approximately $20,000 per year from the state had been used to pay for wages to operate the VIC during the summer months,” Commissioner Zylawy read. “We have been informed the VIC will be receiving no funding from the state. We believe this action will be detrimental to what has been accomplished by the VIC and the St. Regis Community Council in promoting tourism throughout Montana.”
The letter goes on to state the commissioners are “very proud” of the work the VIC has put in to promote statewide tourism and mentions the importance of St. Regis as being a gateway community to Montana for tourists heading into the state from the west.
After the reading Commissioner Zylawy said it was “critical” to remind the state of the fact that they initially approached St. Regis for help with tourism. Koepke responded that the letter that would be attached to the commissioners goes into the history of the VIC.
“That to me is the whole crux of it – when they needed somebody you guys stepped up and found the volunteers,” Commissioner Zylawy said. “Now that they are back in the driver’s seat they want to forget about what you did and jerk you under the rug.”
Koepke agreed with Commissioner Zylawys sentiment and Cheesman added that the community council feels as though the state wants the VIC to continue running on community money.
“I think it’s probably politics,” Cheesman said.
Further discussion was had about the geographic importance of St. Regis for tourism and Koepke elaborated on just who the letter would be sent to.
Once some minor editing is completed the letters will be sent out and Koepke added he is contacting chamber of commerce’s around the state to try to garner more support.