FONDA – The Montgomery County Legislature on Tuesday is set to vote on a resolution designating the county government as the “Tourism Promotion Agency” required by New York state’s “I Love New York” matching grant program, a move that effectively ends the county’s previous practice of contracting annually with the Fulton Montgomery Regional Chamber of Commerce to promote tourism.

“That’ll likely pass on Tuesday night,” Montgomery County Executive Matt Ossenfort said Saturday. “For Montgomery County, once Fulton County decided to go that way, there really wasn’t a decision to be made. I’m not sure the chamber could support that program for Montgomery County [going forward]. So, we have to make a decision in October and get that paperwork [designating a Tourism Promotion Agency] to the state, so we don’t have time to wait around.”

The Fulton County Board of Supervisors earlier this month voted to create its own tourism bureau, operating under the county planning department, ending its annual contract with the regional chamber for tourism promotion.

Mark Kilmer, president of the Fulton Montgomery Regional Chamber of Commerce, has said the combined tourism contracts from both counties provided the chamber with funding that paid about 20% to 25% of its annual operating budget of approximately $500,000. The loss of the funding is expected to result in some layoffs of the chamber staff, and Fulton County officials have said it is likely their county will attempt to hire Anne Boles, the current chamber director of tourism, to serve as the county’s new tourism coordinator.

Ossenfort said he believes Montgomery County will continue to have a strong relationship with the regional chamber, and he is scheduled to meet with chamber officials this week to discuss how his county can continue to partner with the chamber in ways that are beneficial to both entities.

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“Once we saw [what Fulton County did] we realized we were probably going to have to [handle tourism] ourselves, but that was not a problem because we are in a good position to do so,” Ossenfort said.

Over the last several years, Montgomery County has been slowly withdrawing its support for the two-county regional tourism promotion strategy through the chamber. Before the coronavirus pandemic, Montgomery County was providing about $120,000 annually to the chamber — about $50,000 was the ‘I Love New York’ matching grant,…