Topsy Talks on Tourism

We've been fortunate to have a reader with an inside view on local tourism write for us from time to time. In the interest of clarity, we're going to dub this reader/writer "Topsy." Topsy has sent us a very interesting take on some of the shenanigans now going on in local tourism:

Here is a thought on Canada Rob promoting Colbert County so often. Rob is getting his direction from that o’so intelligent Florence-Lauderdale tourism board. They are clearly eyeing a takeover of the Colbert County Tourism Convention & Visitors Bureau. They have mismanaged the huge budget that Florence Lauderdale Tourism had for 20+ years and are now in search of more funding. 

Hey, "Why not takeover Colbert County?" They hired Rob (whom they can control) at a much higher salary than their former director, even paid him under the table for some fake moving expenses (remember that is why Kelly Kelley resigned from the board), built a new visitors center that regardless of what the board claims was WAY over budget (well they had to save Libby Jordan’s not so excellent record of project manager by pretending that the building was under budget when all along it was WAY over budget just like the Library that she was the project manager for. After all, the very reason most of them are on the board to begin with is because Dick Jordan placed them there so that he could and does control them). So LOOKOUT COLBERT COUNTY - Muscle Shoals, Tuscumbia, Sheffield. They are coming for ya and they won’t stop til they get your money and your tourism office.

With that being said, it might be a good thing for Lauderdale and Colbert counties to merge their tourism efforts and become one office. It works well for the Shoals Chamber of Commerce (if they could ever find a new leader to replace Steve Holt who is now the new Mayor of Florence. That sure came back to bite someone on the butt pretty dang fast. Whomever was behind running Steve out of the Chamber sure got a shock when he was elected MAYOR #karma).  But should Lauderdale and Colbert counties EVER merge their tourism offices, it surely doesn’t need to include ANY of the current board members from the Florence Lauderdale Tourism Board.

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And on the Escape Room Florence front, here's a great story:

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