 One of the largest most successful industries in Massachusetts is tourism, and Massachusetts works very hard on this. We have a lot to offer from historical sites, to ecotourism, cultural tourism, and in order to promote ourselves effectively in the region, nationally, and even internationally, Massachusetts has organized the communities of the Commonwealth into regional tourism councils. And as it turns out, when I was a freshman state representative, I learned that the only county in the Commonwealth that did not have a tourism council was Hampshire County. And after some meetings with the business community, we decided to try to launch an effort to secure designation and to secure some funding so we could promote tourism here in the county. Well, as you can imagine, it was resisted by others who already felt that they had control over Hampshire County's tourism dollars. And by the way, tourism councils are funded by taking money from the Hotel Motel tax. And so the hotels and motels in Hampshire County were producing revenue that was going into the general fund, and that revenue was being divided across the Commonwealth to other regional tourism councils, and they could not share in it here in Hampshire County because there was no Hampshire County Tourism Council. So they felt that was unfair, and yes, they were getting some service out of Springfield and even our friends in Franklin County were cooperating and trying to promote some aspects of tourism in Hampshire County, but it's not the same if you don't have your own tourism council to promote your own activities. And so we worked for a number of years unsuccessfully to secure a council here because, of course, there was resistance because it would take the dollars that were going to other councils and redeploy them into Hampshire County. Well, we let that effort go after a while because we weren't getting anywhere, and about a decade later we tried again. And a few years after that, we gave up again because we weren't getting anywhere, and then we tried yet again a third time. But in this case, the fourth time was the charm. It turned out that a couple of years ago we were working on an economic development bill during the height of this recession. And I decided that I would try again, and it turned out that the chair of the committee was also interested in adding tourism councils. In particular, she wanted one in the region that she lived in as a sub-tourism council. They were part of a larger one, and they wanted to have one of their own. And so we decided to put in both of ours into the economic development bill, and sure enough that bill made it to the governor's desk. It was signed into law, and now finally we have a Hampshire Tourism Council. And that group has been working actively to plan how we're going to set up our own organization here and how to most effectively use the dollars that will be made available to us. They received a small grant in the first year of, I think, about $20,000. And then this council here, the newly forming Hampshire Council, came together with the Springfield and Franklin County councils, and together they decided to submit joint applications for funding this year. And we're still awaiting final word, but we're hearing that there's some good possibility that extra credit's going to be given for councils that work together on regional projects. And so the Hampshire Council will get some money for work here in Hampshire County, but they also might get some additional funds by working together with Springfield Council and the one in Franklin County. So our values of working collaboratively here together, our persistence in continuing to look for opportunities, finally brought us success. And Hampshire County now has the opportunity to promote its own venues, its own cultural tourism, its own eco-tourism, and hopefully help improve the profile. We're known for our colleges and universities, but we have so much more to offer, and this tourism council is going to provide the opportunity to help people get to know a lot more about reasons why folks should visit here in Hampshire County.