Council moves to save Joint Tourism in wake of unanticipated consequences of its vote to dismantle ‘Discover Front Royal’ founding agreement

At it’s Special Work Session of Monday evening, March 6, the Front Royal Town Council tried to keep consequences of its 4-2 vote a week earlier to withdraw from the agreement/Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with Warren County that facilitated creation of the 501-C6 Destination Management Organization (DMO) known as Discover Front Royal from becoming a full blown municipal disaster akin to a Norfolk Southern train wreck. Calm down, nothing’s going to get poisoned – except perhaps what’s left of a spirit of municipal cooperation to mutual town-county benefit.

But after discussion, including a summary of consequences Councilman “Skip” Rogers discovered developing the day after council’s February 27th vote to withdraw from the agreement, a council consensus appears to be to correct its mistake and work to preserve the 501-C6 DMO created after three years of discussion to spearhead joint Town-County tourism promotional efforts.

According to Rogers the consequences of council’s action of February 27th included the pending resignation of Discover Front Royal Chairman Kerry Barnhart as a legal move to dissolve the 501-C6 was originally poised to be filed last Friday, March 3rd. Rogers noted that he had communicated with a number of people, including Barnhart, and convinced them to put off that filing until after council’s special work session of March 6. However, without some assurances from council Monday night, that dissolution paperwork would be filed the following day, March 7th.

“To me that is a horrible, horrible thing to happen after they’ve done so much work, have so many connections. We have so much social media and other marketing outreach that’s been accomplished,” Rogers told his colleagues of Discover Front Royal’s efforts dating to last year.

Councilman Rogers, second from foreground left of table, summarizes what he sees as potentially critical consequences of council’s vote withdrawing from the Joint Tourism agreement with the County creating an independent 501-C6 Destination Marketing Organization (DMO) ‘Discover Front Royal’ to oversee joint Town-County tourism promotion.

“I’m suggesting that council consider to protect the value of the 501(-C6). If we let that go, shame on us – that is a very valuable tool,” he noted of what is an independent entity able to access state grants related to tourism promotion that municipalities cannot directly access. “What we need to do is work out the rules of engagement, how we interact with folks,” Rogers added, turning to newly appointed Town Community Development and Tourism Manager Elizabeth “Lizi” Lewis to commend her on her earlier presentation regarding her new oversight duties of Front Royal’s Visitors Center operations.

Over the past couple years dating to the tenure of Interim Town Manager Matt Tederick those operations had been outsourced to tourism consultant JLL Inc. However, JLL recently ran afoul of town officials after closing Visitor Center weekday operations without consulting the Town on that decision. During her presentation, Lewis described her efforts to re-staff the Visitor Center to restore its seven-day-a-week operations.

Elizabeth ‘Lizi’ Lewis summarizes her efforts to put the Visitors Center back to 7-day-a-week operations after the Town retook in-house control of those operations from consulting contractor JLL.

Back on the effort to save Discover Front Royal, Rogers noted that if that is achieved, Barnhart did not want to remain chairman, but would stay on as one of the five-member board. That board is already one member down with the resignation of Vice-Chair Scott Turnmeyer the day after the council vote to terminate the DMO’s founding agreement. Remaining members are Hannah McKinnon and Jesse McClain, with non-voting town and county representatives, Rogers and Delores Oates.

Towards the end of the discussion, Councilman Amber Morris observed, “We have to move this along fast because … in an odd year come November (election) we’ll have two new council members potentially. So, as I’ve sat watching so many council members coming and going, this could all be blown up again by November if we don’t get it done.”

In closing the discussion (1:02:20 video mark) after agreeing with Morris on the necessity of a resolution as soon as possible, Mayor Cockrell said in the wake of a comment by Town Attorney George Sonnett, “While I don’t want to sit here and rehash what went wrong or didn’t go wrong – it’s not helpful. But I will say that Mr. Sonnett is right, there have been MOAs, MOUs back and forth, back and forth and I think we’re on our fourth version of one that was sent to council, and as soon as we got one, we got another one before a meeting came and that gets confusing.

“So, we know what we did wrong and we know what to not do. Now let’s see if we can’t get this thing across the finish line,” the mayor told council.

Mayor Cockrell urges her colleagues to “get this thing across the finish line” in re-establishing a mutually beneficial, cost-saving Joint Tourism operation centered on a jointly created but independent 501-C6 known as ‘Discover Front Royal’.

Contacted Tuesday following Monday’s special work session, Rogers told Royal Examiner that the effort to preserve Discover Front Royal was proceeding, with the dissolution papers on hold. “I’m very happy that I was able to convince council to keep Discover Front Royal alive, hopefully. We will talk today. I have worked very hard over this last week to salvage the 501-C6, I believe that was achieved with a great solution moving forward.”

We also contacted Discover Front Royal still-Chairman, at least momentarily, Kerry Barnhart to get her perspective on the status of the efforts Rogers described. She concurred that the effort to preserve the Joint Town/County Tourism effort and its 501-C6 operational entity was underway. “I want to be hopeful. I do think that tourism in this community needs to come together under one umbrella. And I think both the Town and County think that. The disconnect is how much money should be spent on it,” Barnhart observed. However, she observed that in the past with each municipality operating independently on its tourism promotion that essentially the Town and County were “double paying” for everything as their advertising needlessly overlapped.

She noted that neither the town or county governments were in a position to “save” the 501-C6, that once established it was an independently functioning organization, apparently a source of concern, at least on the Town side. “The 501-C6 is being saved by us to give them an opportunity to pull it together. Hopeful? I don’t know – it’s up to the Town and County on how to work together with an independent entity and raise the level of professionalism brought to the tourism effort,” Barnhart concluded.

See council’s discussion of the future of tourism promotion in this community beginning at the 34:45 mark of the Town video. Other agenda topics covered included an opening presentation by the County-overseen FR-WC EDA officials on the Conservancy Park development initiative inside the town limits at the Avtex redevelopment site; a tourism related plan to refurbish and put into use the ‘Front Royal Train Company’ caboose in the Village Commons Park area downtown; and Fleet Maintenance Building Project Procurement Award, Financing, & Budget Amendment presented by Finance Director B. J. Wilson. Council concluded with a Closed/Executive Session for legal counsel discussion of proposed proffer amendments for the Anna Swan Estates (HEPTAD LLC) project and the proposed proffer statement for Sayre (NVR, Inc.) rezoning.