Tourism bureau to use funds for marketing

WARREN -- Money provided to the Trumbull County Tourism Bureau will allow it to begin marketing efforts, to continue plans to hire a director and prepare for a bowling tournament coming in 2007, officials say.
The $90,000 that county commissioners presented Tuesday to tourism bureau officials comes from the last six months' collections of lodging tax money, said Commissioner Dan Polivka.
The commissioners scrapped the county's former tourism agency last year, then formed an interim board before this latest bureau got started.
Brian Taillon, vice president of the bureau, said it has begun to plan for the county being a stop on the Women's Bowling Association tour in 2007. The tournament will use Crest Lanes in Warren, Wedgewood Lanes in Austintown and the Avalon Inn in Howland, Taillon said.
Having a budget for the first time will allow the bureau to send marketing packets to the bowling group's annual conference in Cincinnati next month, Taillon said. "We're making a lot of progress now," he added.
Jim Economos, the group's treasurer, said the agency also needs funds to pay the office worker who has been keeping open its office on Youngstown-Warren Road since Jan. 1.
Polivka said the lodging tax brings in between $125,000 and $150,000 every six months, and the bureau will begin receiving its own lodging tax money around the beginning of April.