In response to Ian Trowbridge who wrote:
Please provide a breakdown of how the $149 million in TOT collected in the City of San Diego is allocated. That would be much more informative than generalizations you use in your first piece. Thank you.
Ian, many thanks for your response. Your question regarding a specific breakdown of TOT allocations by the city of San Diego is an excellent one, and one which the visitor industry has asked of the city many times over the years. Unfortunately, there doesn’t seem to be a clear and simple answer, although I would agree with you there should certainly be one. What I can tell you for certain is that until the advent of the current administration, monies allocated to tourism marketing, the very purpose of the TOT since its inception in the mid 1960s, saw a steep decline — a cut of 37 percent to the budget of the San Diego Convention & Visitors Bureau alone. Thanks to Mayor Sanders, the hemorrhaging has been stopped.
To the best of our knowledge, roughly 50 percent of TOT revenues collected by the city remain in the general fund to underwrite, in part, the costs of vital municipal services of primary benefit to San Diegans, including public safety. The remaining half is allocated to a variety of city services and programs, including funding for the City’s Commission for Arts & Culture and economic development programs, such as the tourism marketing initiatives of the San Diego Convention & Visitors Bureau.