WAUSAU, WI (WSAU) — A local municipality and a local tourism group are repairing their relationship.
Tuesday evening the Wausau Common Council approved a new tourism agreement with the Wausau/Central Wisconsin Convention and Visitors Bureau. The City terminated its former contract with the organization after it was discovered retired Executive Director Richard Barrett was improperly collecting room tax money from the online travel site Expedia.
RELATED: Wausau committees recommend terminating contract with Central Wisconsin CVB
After the CVB expressed interest in repairing their relationship with the City, City staff began working on a Memorandum of Understanding with the organization. The MOU was approved by the Council back in April after Barrett retired from his position with the CVB.
Mayor Katie Rosenberg says the new contract has everything the Council asked for from its earlier MOU. “All of that MOU language is included in the contract that we’re hoping you’ll approve. So that we can go ahead and move forward with our tourism agreement with a revamped CVB and a revamped relationship.”
The new contract was approved unanimously by both the Room Tax Commission and the Finance Committee before appearing on the Council’s agenda Tuesday night. District 7 Alder Lisa Rasmussen is a member of both committees and says they believe the new contract is a fresh start for both organizations.
“At that meeting [Finance Committee] I said I think we all should recognize a year’s worth of work on the part of not only the Finance Director but the City Attorney and the Mayor. For not only discovering the problem that we had that brought us to that point where we had to exit the contract.
“But then not only collecting the money, but then finding a path forward with an organization that was, through mediation, able to agree with us on some new terms involving transparency, and reporting, and a number of things that we wanted to address that were not present in our old agreements.
“So hopefully this represents a new start between us and our neighboring communities with the CVB. And that we’ll have good results.”
One of those items not present in previous agreements but is included in a new contract is an annual review. After years of no review with the former contract, Rosenberg stressed that the new contract will allow for more oversite and discussion with an annual review.
The new contract was approved unanimously by the Common Council. The Council was also informed that the CVB is currently looking for a new executive director and will be including City officials in that hiring process.
