Resignations roil Mesa’s tourism board

(Left to right) Longtime Mesa Chamber CEO/President Sally Harrison resigned from the Visit Mesa board July 10. Meanwhile, Longtime Mesa community leader and businessman Rich Adams questioned the propriety of some Visit Mesa activities as he resigned from its board. Visit Mesa President/CEO Marc Garcia declined comment on the resignations. (File photos)

Two prominent Mesa business leaders resigned from the Visit Mesa board of directors in July, citing disagreements with the nonprofit’s professional staff over transparency concerns and a $60,000 golf club membership and an upcoming $45,000 overnight retreat at the Ritz-Carlton in Marana, outside Tucson.

Mesa Chamber of Commerce President Sally Harrison resigned on July 10, and Rich Adams, a former Visit Mesa Board chair, stepped down July 14.

Harrison has led the 117-year-old Chamber of Commerce for a decade and has been part of its executive team even longer.

Adams, named Mesa Man of the Year in 2019, is a member of numerous local boards, including Mesa United Way and Mesa’s Economic Development Advisory Board.

Adams had served on the Visit Mesa board for 15 years.

The two leaders sent their resignation letters to Visit Mesa CEO Marc Garcia and copied Mesa’s city manager, mayor and council members.

Harrison’s resignation cited scheduling conflicts, but concluded with, “I hope the items that have been questioned and discussed can be cleared up and that Visit Mesa can move forward with better procedures in place.”

Garcia has apparently resigned from Harrison’s Chamber of Commerce board, his name disappearing from the chamber’s website sometime after late June, according to Wayback Machine, an Internet Archive tool.

Adams’ resignation letter from Visit Mesa criticized “the grandiosity of (Visit Mesa’s) expense budget” and a “cloak of secrecy” surrounding its operations.

The chain of events leading to the resignations began in February.

During that month’s board meeting, a Visit Mesa staff member reported the January purchase of a corporate membership to Las Sendas Golf Club for $60,000, according to meeting minutes.

Visit Mesa board chairman Carl Grupp told the Tribune the golf membership will be used by four sales executives to entertain meeting planners, travel agents, tour operators and others who “bring business to fill the Convention Center, fill the hotels.”

Las Sendas’ 18-hole championship course is currently open for the public to purchase tee times, but it has plans to go private once 350 memberships are sold – which could be years away.

When that happens, tourists visiting Mesa would be barred from the Las Sendas course unless they know a member.

Grupp said he was unaware of Las Sendas’ plans to go private, but he defended the corporate membership as a valid expense, saying that golf is “a sexy part of our destination. … You don’t have this kind of golf everywhere.”

Adams said he and many others glossed over the golf membership expenditure in February, but board member Jaye O’Donnell, Mesa’s assistant economic development director, noticed that the membership was not brought to the board for a vote according to Visit Mesa policy.

O’Donnell requested more information, including a copy of the contract with Las Sendas.

Adams says his concerns about the relationship between the board and Visit Mesa’s professional staff began when O’Donnell’s inquiries about the expenditure were met with resistance.

In May, O’Donnell said she formally requested a copy of the contract between Visit Mesa and Las Sendas Golf Club as well as the people listed on Visit Mesa’s membership with the club.

“My request was denied and to date has not been provided,” O’Donnell said in a statement.

Grupp acknowledges that he declined O’Donnell’s request for a copy of the contract with Las Sendas Golf Club.

He said it was because at the time, the membership was on the agenda of an upcoming finance committee meeting.

In late June, the board held a vote to retroactively approve the membership, and it passed with a large majority following some “admonishment,” Adams said.

It’s not clear why the contract and names on it have still not been provided to O’Donnell, who remains on the board.

Adams said the hesitancy to provide information requested by a board member was more problematic for him than the golf membership itself or the lapse in bringing it for a vote.

“I’ve seen the email chains,” Adams said of O’Donnell’s inquiries. “I think they were appropriate questions for a board member exercising due diligence to ask.”

He said it’s the board’s job to supervise the CEO and organization. Board members are fiduciaries, meaning they have an obligation to act in the financial interests of Visit Mesa.

The relationship between the board and Visit Mesa’s professional staff is similar to that of the one between Mesa City Council and City Manager.

“The buck stops with the board,” Adams said.

Reliant on tax dollars

Visit Mesa is independent of the City of Mesa, but it receives the bulk of its revenue from the transient lodging tax, or “bed tax,” collected by the city.

By law, 60% of the revenue collected from Mesa’s 5% bed tax must be spent on tourism marketing. The city currently has a contract with Visit Mesa to spend almost all of that required expenditure.

Under a five-year contract that expires in 2025, Visit Mesa gets more than half of Mesa’s total bed tax revenue.

In 2020, Mesa said in a report its total bed tax collections averaged $4 million annually, but the figure is probably significantly higher today amid a post-pandemic sales tax revenue bump.

Visit Mesa also provides marketing services to Queen Creek and some private clients.

For the fiscal year ending June 2022, Visit Mesa reported $5.1 million in revenue. Its CEO’s base salary in 2022 was $354,000, according to its required report to the IRS.

Visit Mesa includes a paid professional staff overseen by the unpaid board of directors. The board’s 36 members comprise a who’s who of Mesa leaders and industry players.

The board meetings are not open to the public and Visit Mesa isn’t subject to public records requests, but it must submit financial information to the IRS that is available to the public.

Adams praised the marketing efforts and achievements of Garcia and Visit Mesa, but he said the organization’s response to questions about expenditures and requests for documents and information is “reprehensible.”

Instead of just admitting its mistake, Adams felt Visit Mesa leadership decided to “attack the messenger.”

He was troubled by reports from other board members that Visit Mesa staff were framing concerns over expenditures as a personal conflict.

“The story that was promulgated shifted from the issue Jaye raised to ‘Jaye is grinding an ax and (Mesa Economic Development Director) Bill Jabjiniak is jealous,’” Adams said.

In his resignation letter Adams said it was “unacceptable that an effort was mounted to discredit a board member who was performing her fiduciary duty.”

Garcia did not respond to a request for comment on this story.

Grupp strongly disputed there was any kind of effort to impugn O’Donnell for raising the issue.

“I couldn’t be more emphatic to say there was not,” he said, calling O’Donnell “a capable and talented professional.”

But Grupp also repeatedly attributed the controversy surrounding the golf expenditure to “jealousy” and “personality things” and characterized the talk about it as “wrong and … unprofessional” – language that mirrors Adams’ descriptions of the chatter from staff about the dust up.

Grupp also called the issues cited in Adams’ resignation letter “meritless or biased individual opinions” in a statement to the Tribune.

“This is a board that’s always been very transparent, and nothing’s changing,” he said. “I don’t understand what the end game is” for the critics.

Grupp, a travel industry professional, said Visit Mesa has been a good steward of tax money, which is generated mostly from non-residents. He said the nonprofit delivers increased hotel stays and revenue for the city.

“Visit Mesa, for what tools that they have, runs at a pretty high level. It gets a lot of respect” from the travel industry, he said. It has “elevated Mesa to uncharted territory” in the realm of tourism, despite not having some of the amenities of neighboring communities.

Adams and Grupp agreed the organization has done many things Mesa can be proud of.

Another layer to the golf membership drama is that Tannis McBean, the secretary of the Visit Mesa board’s executive committee, is married to Wayne McBean, a co-owner of Las Sendas Golf Club.

Adams noted that Tannis McBean did not recuse herself from the vote in spite of her familial connection to the ownership of Las Sendas Golf Club.

He said the secretary should have erred on the side of recusal.

“Does it pass the headline test? Does it pass the smell test? It doesn’t matter if a good lawyer can argue it’s OK – that’s how you stay out of trouble and you keep people’s trust,” he said.

For Adams, the $45,000 overnight Visit Mesa planning retreat at the Marana Ritz-Carlton coming up Aug. 10 also ran afoul of the smell test. Rooms there in August are around $400 a night.

In his letter, Adams said he couldn’t defend that kind of lavish accommodation to taxpayers or city officials.

Adams said he didn’t intend to “throw a grenade” at Visit Mesa with his resignation; he wants to see the organization embrace criticism and oversight.

“The board environment should encourage thought-provoking questions, constructive critique and debate in a non-retaliatory environment,” he said in his letter.

The local luminaries on the Visit Mesa board include District 6 Councilman Scott Somers, who requested a copy of the city’s contract with Visit Mesa following the resignations.

Asked for comment on the situation, he would say only: “The resignations have raised the eyebrows of at least one other (council member).”

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