Editor, Manteca Bulletin,
What an insightful column in Saturdays paper entitled “City manager should say no to zombie CVB.”   According to Wikipedia “A Convention and Visitors Bureau(CVB) is an organization that promotes a town, city, region, or country in order to increase the number of visitors. It promotes the development and marketing of a destination, focusing on convention sales, tourism marketing, and services.”
Sadly, Manteca’s CVB has fallen away from those expectations over the past few years. 
 The Manteca Street Fair was never developed solely to pay the salary of the Executive Director (ED) of the CVB.  It was developed to bring an opportunity for vendors to come to our community to sell their quality products; to help fill the hotel and motels in the community; and help aid the CVB in the promotion of convention sales, tourism marketing, and services.  The Street Fair is not the singular responsibility of the CVB.   Their responsibilities include an expectation of them to promote Manteca as a destination location, and not just a pit stop on the way to another destination.  It is our expectation that they promote all of the events in the greater Manteca area.
 Over the past years there has been a definite lag in the promotion of Manteca. Dennis Wyatt did a tremendous job highlighting the problems Manteca has been facing with the CVB not focusing on the cities expectation of the promotion of our community.  When are we going to hold them responsible for fulfilling their obligation as a functioning CVB?
 I have no idea of who the people are who serve in the CVB Board of Directors.  I went on line to see who was involved and I personally know no one listed. Do they even reside in the Manteca community? 
 I have been in contact with some of the people who have been involved in the CVB in the past, and those I spoke with have the same concerns as I.  Wouldn’t it be great to get that core group of citizens; living in Manteca, have them take over the Street Fair?  They would make sure that the funds raised from the Street Fair go back to the community in the form of sizeable donations.  Wouldn’t it be great to have a Street Fair that benefited our community and not paid the salary of a non-existent Convention and Visitors Bureau?

 Carol Davis
Manteca