By QUINTON SMITH/YachatsNews.com
The city of Yachats has chosen a new operator for its city-funded visitors center, approving a two-year contract with a former council member who specializes in online marketing and business development.
In awarding the contact to James Kerti, the City Council moved away from having the Yachats Chamber of Commerce run the center and marketing programs, which it had been doing for at least 24 years.
Kerti’s company, White Rose Studio, came out ahead of the chamber and two other bids during a review and rating by a five-member committee. The Yachats City Council unanimously approved the committee’s recommendation and awarded the $65,000-a-year contract last week.
Money to operate the center and for marketing comes from lodging taxes collected by the city.
The visitor center contract comes up every two years, when the city can either extend it another two years or put it out for competitive bid. This year five people, organizations or companies applied, four applications were deemed credible, and the review committee awarded scores based on experience, qualifications, quality of the proposed work, and familiarity with Yachats.
The committee gave Kerti’s company 660 points, the chamber 580, a Eugene marketing company 563, and Beth Lee 225.
Councilor Max Glenn, who had been a strong supporter of the chamber’s work, said before the council’s vote last week that he was pleased with the committee’s work and said he voted for the change with “mixed emotions.”
Glenn said his decision was based in part that the number of center volunteers had dwindled to no more than three before its seasonal closure last winter and that training had stopped. Over the past 18 month some council members also had been expressing frustration with the center’s marketing plans, and that until mid-2019 struggled to get regular reports on operations, as required in the contract.
“I believe it is time for a change,” Glenn said.
But in awarding the bid to Kerti’s company, the council acknowledged that a transition could be bumpy.
That is proving the case.
The Yachats chamber – not the city — holds a month-to-month lease on the visitor center’s office space in the C&K Plaza. The chamber offered to sub-lease the space to Kerti for a year at $735 a month, but the city deemed the price too high and turned it down.
“It would be great to have visibility for the visitors center whether it’s in that location or someplace else,” City Manager Shannon Beaucaire said Wednesday.
For now, Kerti will use an office on the north side of the Yachats Commons and have a booth at the farmer’s market on Sundays until a more suitable location can be found.
Chamber leader angry over change
The chamber has had the visitor center contract since 1996 and had contracted with Beverly Wilson to run it since 1997.
Wilson and chamber president Linda Hetzler, owner of the Drift Inn Restaurant and Motel and Yachats Mercantile, are upset with the change. In a tersely worded email to the city last week, Hetzler said Wilson would have all the center’s materials organized for Kerti before July 1, when the new contract took effect. But that was the extent of the handoff.
Kerti met briefly with Wilson on Thursday before he and city workers hauled dozens of boxes of brochures, maps and other material out of the center.
Hetzler also said the website – www.Yachats.Org — used to market and promote tourism in Yachats belongs to the chamber and that neither Kerti nor the city can use it. Same with the post office mail box, she said.
Beaucaire and Heather Hoen, the city’s new community services director, understand the switch is going to bruise feelings in the community. But they say the process was transparent and fair. Once transition details become clearer, Hoen said the city expects Kerti to develop an interim plan “so we have an idea” what is going on.
“We hope that the community recognizes that this is being done for the betterment of Yachats businesses and the community,” Beaucaire said.
Hetzler acknowledged the decline in volunteers, but said that age, retirements and the pursuit of other interests “made it a constant struggle to maintain and train” them.
Hetzler told YachatsNews that Wilson and the chamber will continue to organize events – if the coronavirus pandemic allows — like the fall Mushroom Festival and two seasonal craft shows.
But she was critical of the city’s personnel actions the past few years, saying it is doing “a terrible job in handling people who have done a lot around here.”
“They’re coming from big cities and don’t know how to do a small town,” Hetzler said. “This is a little town … people have moved to this town because of its community.”
That said, Hetzler said the chamber and Wilson will move on to other things and hopes the aftermath of the split between the city and chamber will settle down.
“Everyone will be fine,” she said. “I hope that there’s movement afoot to heal the wounds.”
Kerti’s unusual background
Kerti, 33, has an unusual background. He moved to Yachats in 2015 after working as a college and professional basketball scout and consultant. He still uses his expertise to teach other basketball scouts, coaches and analysts.
His company now focuses more on digital strategies to help business owners grow their companies, website design and production, and strategic planning.
Kerti was on the Planning Commission for two years before being elected to the City Council in November 2018. He took office in January 2019 and served until this January when he resigned in frustration over the council’s work. Kerti said then he could serve the community better in other ways.
“This is in alignment with me wanting to help the community,” he told YachatsNews.
Now, Kerti said, the biggest challenge facing big and small tourism organizations is how to operate in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic that has hit the industry – and the Oregon coast – particularly hard.
“My priority is to do my part to make this a smooth transition,” Kerti told YachatsNews. “But we need to re-examine the way we do things, to bring people here in alignment with public safety and the health of people in the community.”