Commissioners approve changes to Visitors Committee

SIDNEY -- The Cheyenne County commissioners approved changes to the county tourism promotion.

Changes were made to the Tourism Director job description, Visitors Committee bylaws, Visitors Committee member job description, Grant policies and guidelines and Grant Agreement templates.

Changes include board members will either represent the hospitality industry or be at-large members.Tourism Director Kendra Mitchell said changes to the member requirements aligns with the state requirements.

"We removed the sentence that required specific representation from attractions, events or at-large non-tourism member. State Statute only mandates the minimum members from the hotel industry, and so we removed the language that goes beyond this requirement and was not legally necessary. The new final sentence in that section says remaining members may represent other segments of the tourism industry or community as deemed appropriate by the county commissioners," Mitchell said.

The Visitor Committee job description was shortened as well.

"We removed a bullet point under Qualifications and Expectations. There is a bullet point that says 'members may not financially benefit from decisions made by the committee. The reasoning for that is that Visitor Committee members are still expected to disclose a direct conflict of interest and recuse themselves from those voting matters when it's appropriate. But it's unrealistic to prohibit indirect financial benefit that may occur from increased tourism activity," Mitchell said.

She said she met with four Visitor Committee members personally, one by phone and did not hear from the sixth member.