Tourism Improvement District proposal

 

Fred Allebach

7/30/25

Proposal for city to leverage Tourism Improvement District (TID) reauthorization for local full cost accounting sustainable tourism 

 

Abstract

-True sustainability calls for an equity component for labor.

-Sonoma sustainable tourism lacks this component.

-Equity has been externalized in Sonoma economic policy.

-Business and city economic interests appear as paternalistic, and justify an unsustainable economy as necessary.

-TID reauthorization is a chance for the city to leverage more labor equity. 

-The city can restructure the TID to make for specific labor benefits or it can demand, for TID reauthorization, that hotels have a non-interference policy to union organizing. 

 

What is Sustainability? 

Sustainability is a popular and apt public policy frame that includes a triple bottom line (TBL), and full cost accounting. No unaccounted-for negative externalities allowed. Triple bottom line means that economy, environment, and society (profit, planet, and people) all have to be accounted for as equal public policy pillars. Unfortunately, the meaning of sustainability has been altered and watered down in many cases so as to not include people and equity.

By not including people and equity, many so-called sustainability initiatives are actually unsustainable when measured against what the full sustainability paradigm really means. See University of Illinois at Urbana curriculum on Sustainability.

https://www.coursera.org/learn/sustainability 

 

Lack of equity is understandable since in hierarchical class society, workers interests are the greatest by number but the lowest by political power. Today, business and government have framed sustainability to be all environmental, and to only reflect their economic interests, externalizing the interests of labor.  

 

 

The City Council can leverage TID reauthorization to gain concessions for labor interests

It’s not an unreasonable ask for the Council to leverage TID reauthorization with some concessions to labor. Make reauthorization contingent on wider benefit sharing with labor. 

 

Why? Sustainable tourism calls for it. The wine-tourism-hospitality combine is making high profits and the benefits need to be better shared to cover negative externality social costs.

 

Prices don’t need to go up for labor to have a fair share of the pie, all that needs happen is for business to lower its profit margin which by objective measure is quite high.  https://home.binwise.com/blog/wine-industry-growth-rate   

 

Since the City Council has all the cards to grant a TID reauthorization, the TID terms of agreement can be changed to reflect new, fully sustainable priorities. 

 

Maybe the city can simply leverage the local hotels to get an agreement to have a no interference policy with union organizing actions (card check), like with the Plaza hotel agreement? 

 

What are tourism’s local negative externalities?

The city and county, by boosting a luxury tourism market to finance themselves with TOT, have presided over an economic regime where all prices are artificially inflated. Local prices, food, and rents are affordable only to the upper middle class and to wealthy tourists and homebuyers. This has made all prices unaffordable to the wine-tourism-hospitality combine workforce. While government and business reap strong financial benefits, workers do not.

 

A living wage with health benefits is not an unreasonable ask. Otherwise an argument is made that only by being unsustainable, can our economy work. That seems like an unreasonable proposition.

 

Local hotel union movement

A hotel union movement is afoot in Sonoma Valley. Sonoma Mission Inn is in process and has passed critical thresholds of organizing. The Plaza hotel has an agreement innplace to not interfere with union organizing. 

 

Benchmarks will soon be set so wine-tourism-hospitality combine workers can look forward to a living wage with benefits. This will put pressure in non-union hotels to ante up. This need not be an adversarial process and indeed, TBL, full cost accounting sustainability calls for city government to back labor and equity interests on equal ground with business and profit interests.     

 

What is sustainable tourism?

Samuel Mendlinger, Sustainable Tourism professor at Boston College says, “... tourism is not hospitality. The goal is not to provide the best service possible to our client/tourist; rather, true tourism development has three clients who all must be satisfied: (1) the tourist who we wish to provide with the best memories and experiences possible; (2) the local population who we wish to aid in wealth and good job creation; and (3) the future, so we wish not to destroy or seriously damage the environment or the local culture.”

 

Sustainable tourism is defined by the UN Environment Program and UN World Tourism Organization as “tourism that takes full account of its current and future economic, social and environmental impacts, addressing the needs of visitors, the industry, the environment and host communities.” 

 

This is TBL, full cost accounting. This is what Sustainability is and what sustainable tourism is: TBL, full cost accounting. 

  

City sustainable tourism is lacking a social component and is therefore unsustainable.  These same concepts were presented to the TID Board many years ago by myself and Tom Conlon. Sustainable tourism still lacks an equity component for labor; there has been little to no equity movement at the TID or the Sonoma Valley Visitors Bureau or in city economic policy. What we see are attempts to mitigate negative externalities in ways that do not squatley address the inequity that is in fact created by a city economic policy that is biased to business interests so as to fund the city. 

 

Special District policy? 

Who approves this TID special district? Just the Council? LAFCO? Is CA special district formation law in effect for the TID?

 

Why not change the TID’s terms? 

The TID, like all policy is not cast in stone. Other types of special districts can levy fees etc. and use them for certain purposes. TID conditions of approval can be reformatted to include sustainable tourism equity goals, which are currently lacking in city sustainable tourism. By close analysis of city web pages, sustainable tourism is all about the economy and environment, not one word on equity which is an integral component of real sustainability. 

 

The city Sustainable Tourism page does specify environmental sustainability, but where do we see and find social sustainability as equitable economic outcomes for labor in any city policy?  

 

Branding and ad campaigns versus reality

In the mid 2000s, as sustainability burgeoned as a cutting edge policy concept, SoCo and Sonoma Valley wine rebranded themselves quickly as sustainable. But this Vintners Alliance designation is self-certified and has no social equity aspect. Wineries and vineyards resist union organizing and workers rights in fire conditions. 

 

The combine and the city appear as paternalistic to labor, not seeing labor as an integral and essential part of the TBL that needs equal accounting for. 

 

By objective measure, the wine-tourism-history combine is not sustainable because the negative externalities of worker’s poverty are unaccounted for. UN Sustainable Development Goals do not externalize the people who hold society from the equation.  

 

8000 SV residents are food insecure

Case in point, 8000 SV residents are food insecure, this in an area where the wine-tourism-hospitality combine is the main economic driver. Profits are not being equitably shared. 

https://www.sonomanews.com/article/news/report-8000-sonoma-valley-residents-face-food-insecurity/  

 

Sonoma labor relations? 

City economic policy seems to favor the management class over the labor class. There is no city funding to unions or to working class advocate organizations. The Chamber, a business interests outfit, manages the city’s economic policy and receives a good chunk of money every year. The TID generates 100s of $1000s of dollars a year which funds the city and the SVVB, where is the city’s overall labor equity component? 

 

Is City management staff union? Is City management in tension with city unions? To what extent can it be said that the city is biased to management and business interests?