The longer one lives, the more likely they’ve had an occasion where a minor disagreement flares up into something more.
Be it in a relationship, with a friend or even at work, things can explode far beyond the initial issue and create lasting tension or even something more.
That seems to have recently occurred right here in Ely with what has now become a months-long discourse over the use of area lodging tax dollars.
What started as a debate over monies distributed to VisitEly, also known as the Tourism Bureau, has turned into a full-fledged and at times ugly public dispute.
Lawyers are involved, public bodies in particular the Ely City Council have been bombarded, and lines are being drawn in the sand.
Other entities including the Ely Chamber of Commerce have been drawn into the fray, and a recent Fall Lake Town Board meeting made it clear that other issues - particularly the development and effectiveness of the new trailhead building - are now part of the divide.
All involved would be best served to step back, take a deep breath, and put their guns back in the holster.
A little history first. For years, the area’s lodging tax board contracted with an outside entity to do marketing and spend the dollars generated by the area’s three percent “bed tax.”
You may recall the various April Fools Day spoofs that were part of the spending. Campaigns such as a fictitious bid for the Summer Olympics and the “sale” of Ely to Canada did what they were intended to do and introduced Ely to an audience hundreds of miles away.
The lodging tax dollars also flowed hundreds of miles away as firms elsewhere were contracted to take on the marketing efforts.
That changed more recently with the Ely Tourisim Bureau, now known as VisitEly, taking the reins. By all accounts, VisitEly has done a good job in marketing the region and has utilized the changing technological landscape with its use of digital marketing, video and podcasts to promote our town.
Success is hard to measure, but it’s heartening to see some efforts paying off including a big jump in lodging tax receipts in 2025 in the winter months.
Yet both anecdotal evidence and inflation suggest there are fewer people visiting Ely in the summer than before. If lodging prices go up over the years and tax receipts don’t keep up, it’s fair to say that traffic is at-best stagnant. Making it more difficult to gauge is no real way to track the number of units rented, or the dollars that may be slipping away from vacation rentals that may not be collecting the lodging tax.
And like it or not, some local officials believe a more balance approach to lodging tax is needed - shifting some of the funds that were previously earmarked for VisitEly and used for measures such as staffing the new trailhead building and supporting its operations.
That’s a legitimate debate and one that has and will continue to be played out in local government circles, as it should be.
Instead, the debate has turned ugly, with local governments facing pressure to boot those who were unhappy with the status quo, charges of legal missteps, and reluctance and refusal to share how public dollars are being spent.
If it continues, we wouldn’t blame the lodging tax board members if they threw up their hands and said “enough of the bickering” and opted to send all of the money away to a Twin Cities ad agency as they used to. After all, that’s what happened for many years. No entity, VisitEly, the Ely Chamber, or the city of Ely, has a birthright to the lodging tax dollars.
That’s clearly not an optimal solution and we agree that the dollars are best spent locally, providing jobs to professionals to market the area and funding initiatives that fuel our tourism economy. However, the focus needs to be not on jobs but on marketing, something that is not the case currently.
Compromise isn’t a dirty word - it’s something that is badly needed or else the public war of words is only likely to get worse.
