Too much tourism, one critic says
Andrew Fletcher, a local musician, served on the TDA-created Community Leadership Council for a year until resigning this week, citing an “opaque, confusing” and disappointing process to reshape the Tourism Development Product Fund.
“I think from the TDA’s perspective, Brown’s tenure was a wild success,” Fletcher said April 3. “But from the perspective of a community suffering under the weight of unsustainable over-tourism reliant on paying low-wages to their workforce, it’s led to catastrophic development trends. What’s been good for tourism businesses has been deeply damaging to the life and livelihood of the tourism workforce, and I hope that her replacement recognizes that better than she did.”
Fletcher would like to see the TDA abolished and a new organization created to distribute room tax money “for greater public benefit.”