| Long Beach Press-Telegram |
Wednesday, January 17, 2001
DiMario resigns CVB post
By John W. Cox,
Her decision follows a year in which the bureau was accused of misreporting hotel room bookings, a charge that never implicated her. More recently, bureau board members began asserting their authority over hers, deciding Friday to rescind her plan to give bureau employees a Friday off each month. In a resignation letter dated Friday, Howell DiMario, 51, told board members she was proud of the bureau's accomplishments in raising hotel occupancy rates and revenue from the city's hotel bed tax. "And yet, it is a single problem with a sales goal report for one year one that was a result of outdated systems and misunderstandings, that has been remedied, and that I accepted responsibility for that now drives a few members of this board and the daily newspaper to a wholesale discrediting and diminishing of the unique and valuable work we do for this great city," she wrote. "I can no longer stand by silently when I know full well that there are a handful of people who are absolutely determined that I become the tool for destabilizing and destroying this bureau and all the extraordinary work that we do for this board and this city. "Libeled, slandered" "For all these months," the letter continues, "I have personally and professionally withstood a calculated and deliberate campaign to discredit this bureau and me. I have been publicly libeled, slandered, unfairly and very harshly judged, brutally scrutinized, harassed, insulted and maligned. "I stayed the course because the work of this bureau, the employees of this bureau, the board, the mayor, council and city management have always deserved and received my unwavering commitment. I stayed the course because I know, and people who know me know, that I am a person of honor and integrity and I have and continue to conduct myself personally and professionally with honor and integrity every day. "Whatever errors of judgment, disagreements and mistakes may be ascribed to me, I know that at worst they are a by-product of passionate leadership leadership that learns, experiences and grows everyday. Only those who are more comfortable criticizing and watching from the sidelines would construe these as fatal flaws. Only those quick to believe the negative and quick to judge the doers impose cynical interpretation." In an interview Tuesday, Howell DiMario said she was stepping down as the bureau's president and CEO so she can pursue other business interests with her husband and teach at a local high school or college. Some board members complained Tuesday that Howell DiMario notified city officials of her retirement before they received the news. She notified the mayor and city manager by phone, but said she chose to inform bureau board members through letters sent over the weekend, which some members said they had not received by late Tuesday. Letters also were delivered to City Council members Tuesday. Confusion charged "There's obviously some confusion in Linda's mind as to whether she reports to her board of directors or to the mayor and City Council," board Chairman Chris Pook said. "It's very regrettable that I have to learn of this in this manner." City Manager Henry Taboada voiced regret at Howell DiMario's retirement. "Ms. DiMario has been a driving force in the development of a new Long Beach," Taboada said in a written statement. "She will continue to be valued for her long and successful service to the city. Under her tenure, the Long Beach (Area) Convention and Visitors Bureau flourished and hotel occupancy reached all-time highs." Howell DiMario joined the taxpayer-funded bureau in 1993 after working at convention and visitor bureaus in Tucson, Ariz., and Oakland. Active in politics and professional organizations, she has often been mentioned as a Long Beach mayoral candidate, a position she said she turned down in favor of the board's decision last year to renew her three-year employment contract at the bureau. Under her leadership, the city's hotel occupancy rate has grown from 48 percent in 1993 to more than 71 percent, and revenue from the city's hotel bed tax has more than doubled to about $13 million a year. "Our productivity and yield on the available hotel inventory is the best in the western United States," she said in the letter to board members, "and our progress to destination status is considered by the tourism industry in this country to be extraordinary." But the bureau has attracted negative as well as positive attention over the past year as auditors looked into allegations that the leg bureau's sales figures were incorrect. Audit report Outside auditors concluded in a report released in September that the bureau had given its salespeople undue credit for 50,000 hotel bookings, or almost 8 percent of the room nights it claimed over a 21-month period. As a result, the auditors said, salespeople were overpaid bonuses totaling $19,500. Soon after the findings were released, the bureau's vice president of sales, Tom Dorsett, left the bureau under a negotiated settlement, the details of which were not disclosed. Third District Councilman Frank Colonna said Tuesday he was disappointed at Howell DiMario's decision to resign. "It's disappointing because I think she's always been a really powerful leader of the CVB," he said. "It's going to be difficult to fill that vacancy." -- Staff writer Jason Gewirtz contributed to this report. |