Evidently SFW put together one heck of a proposal that will be a big benefit to UT wildlife, hunters, and access. Now that the decision is made, I provide a few highlights of the RMEF response to the RFP that raise the bar pretty high. The recommending committee, finds the SFW bid to exceed the RMEF bid on these points.
- 100% of the proceeds from the 200 Expo permits would be returned to Utah for habitat, access, and conservation.
- Since this would have been RMEF's national convention, RMEF would have followed its written policy on auction tags sold at the national convention, where 100% of the proceeds from any national convention auction tags would be returned to the state agency. Currently, auction tags at this event only require 30% go directly to the state, with 10% to the selling organization, and the selling organization keeping the other 60% for conservation they complete within the state of UT.
- RMEF offered to give UT DWR 50% of the total net income from the national convention that would be moved to SLC. Given the level of sponsors RMEF attacts to its national convention, the fact RMEF has 205,000+ members, and RMEF has a media platform that reaches millions, the size of this event would have grown far from what it currently is and would have grown far beyond what RMEF currently has as its national convention in Las Vegas. To provide 50% of that larger number is not insignificant.
- RMEF voluntarily committed to provide an annual independent audit of the expo/convention and make the results of such available to the public. After all, these tags around which this event seems to be focused are a public asset. RMEF believes it is only reasonable to give the public assurance of what is done with those monies generated by the public asset of tags,
Plenty of other points in the RFP, but these are the points it seems a selection committee would focus on when ranking the criteria of how much benefit would be provided to Utah.
Congrats to SFW. Their pitch convinced this newly formed RFP committee that they have a better deal for Utah hunters and Utah wildlife. The entire reason RMEF invested significant time and money into this effort was to increase the amount of benefit the public receives from their public resource; in this case, 200 tags.
