TRI-COUNTY — As the Big Bend enters its slow summer season, some folks are concerned that the presence of the U.S. Army in the region might mean even slimmer budgets for tourism programming in the months to come. Around 500 troops were deployed to Alpine and Presidio in the spring by the Trump administration, and in lieu of building temporary camps the Department of Defense has opted to house troops in local hotels.
While the guaranteed business through November has been a boon to local hotel operators, local governments aren’t seeing the benefits. The federal government is exempt from paying the majority of local taxes and fees, including hotel occupancy (HOT) taxes. By law, HOT funds can only be used to promote tourism — a restriction that’s proven controversial in places like Marfa and Brewster County, where tourism money is abundant but government funding for local necessities like road repair and healthcare are scarce.
That’s not quite the case for the Presidio Convention and Visitor’s Bureau (CVB), which typically has an annual budget in the low six figures. In Presidio, every dollar of HOT money counts in attempting to attract visitors to one of the region’s more underrated destinations — and the Army is currently occupying over half of the rooms in one of Presidio’s two hotels.
Presidio CVB Treasurer Irma Juarez started raising the alarm at public meetings last month. She estimates that the board will miss out on about $56,000 this year because of the deployment. “For us, that’s a huge hit,” she explained. “I think we’re at a disadvantage, even if we welcome [the Army’s] presence here. There just has to be a better thought-out process.”
Juarez would like to start by beefing up the city’s efforts to track its visitation, keeping closer tabs with hotel owners to figure out what brings people to Presidio and how to encourage them to stay. It’s a science that officials across the state have been trying to perfect in order to make the best use of HOT money. “As treasurer, my recommendation is being more conservative,” she said. “Right now, we just don’t know what’s going to happen.”
The need for enhanced number crunching was echoed over in Brewster County, where their equivalent organization, Visit Big Bend, rakes in nearly $2 million annually. On that side of Paisano Pass, the conversation has been more focused on the availability of hotel rooms, particularly for big annual events like the world-famous Cowboy Poetry Festival. “Our larger events are very concerned, but there’s a lack of information,” Chris Ruggia, the City of Alpine’s tourism director, said at last week’s board meeting. “They don’t know for sure what the potential impact on room availability is going to be.”
Ruggia said that this year’s Spirits of the West festival in Alpine saw a big dip in attendance this spring because many attendees were unable to secure rooms in town and had to commute from Fort Stockton — a dangerous and unappealing prospect for an event centered around booze. (The Sentinel reached out to the event organizers but didn’t receive a response.)
Both Juarez and Ruggia brought up short-term rentals as a possible solution. In Presidio, the market is small and mostly unregulated; in Brewster County, it’s a booming multimillion dollar business. The Department of Defense (DOD) tends to contract with chain hotels, but beefing up short-term rental stock could be a region-wide solution to the temporary room shortage.
Ruggia also wondered if local governments could set up an agreement with the DOD like the one Big Bend National Park has with Brewster County — PILTs, or “Payments in Lieu of Taxes,” are a way for the federal government to make up for the enormous gap in property taxes that would otherwise not exist if a non tax-exempt entity owned that land.
In Presidio, Mayor John Ferguson floated the idea of asking the DOD for help with projects around town — during past deployments, service members have taken on off-duty projects like road grading and building renovations. “I think they want to be involved, and basically we just need to find a way to let them do that,” he said at a city council meeting on June 3.
Kendall Woodard, spokesperson for the DOD’s Joint Task Force Southern Border, said that the military was open to suggestions. “We welcome ideas for opportunities to educate and strengthen relationships with local communities and their members regarding our mission while we remain focused on our number one priority — achieving 100% operational control of the border,” she wrote in a statement to The Sentinel.