EDITORIAL

Having a vital, viable Conference and Visitors Bureau may not seem

like the most important part of making a city healthy, until you start

looking deep inside city budgets and at the cash registers of local

businesses. There you find that both rely on money generated by visitors,

tourists and shoppers.

The new chairman of the Huntington Beach Conference and Visitors

Bureau, Doug Traub, knows this equation. And Traub, who’s been on the job

just more than a month, is looking to boost that equation, in his words,

“to the next level.”

Traub has taken over a bureau that got pulled into the controversy

surrounding former Councilman Dave Garofalo, who took -- and has since

returned -- $11,500 from the nonprofit’s bank account. He’s had to study

the policies and procedures that allowed the money transfer to happen to

figure out how to make sure it doesn’t occur again.

Traub already is earning kudos for his handling of the incident. And

once he’s through fixing that problem, then it will really be the time to

pay attention to what’s happening at the bureau.

Traub has a host of promising ideas to improve the organization --

longer hours, a larger role in development talks and a more informative

Web site, among them.

And then there are his plans for the bureau’s visitor guide, which was

at the center the Garofalo controversy. Traub envisions it expanding from

a present 42,000 circulation to some 250,000, an increase that would send

the selling of the city far and wide.

It’s the type of selling Surf City needs and deserves. And, thus far,

Traub seems to be the type of promoter the city needs, as well.