City Council Exploring Money Pits
With the NASCAR Hall of Fame racing into the red and the chiefs of uptown booster groups making headlines for their exorbitant salaries, the Charlotte City Council on Monday night unanimously voted to review the city’s dealings with four of its so-called financial partners.
The council’s budget committee is being tasked with the chore, but even the councilmember who urged his colleagues to undertake the review seems uncertain what its goal should be in exploring the operations and finances of Charlotte Center City Partners, the Charlotte Regional Partnership, the Charlotte Regional Visitors Authority (CRVA), and the Arts & Science Council (ASC).
“I don’t have any particular outcome in mind,” said Michael Barnes, a Democrat who has been critical of the high-dollar salaries paid to the outfits’ executives, as well as the abysmal financial performance of the CRVA-managed NASCAR Hall of Fame, projected to lose about $1.3 million this year.
“It is though, in my opinion, our job to take a look at the financial, fiduciary and organizational relationship we have with these entities,” Barnes said.
It is quite the financial relationship. The city, for example, is doling out nearly $3 million this year to Center City Partners, through a special municipal service district tax levied in parts of uptown and Historic South End. Partners President Michael Smith pockets an annual pay package of nearly $350,000, including an $88,500 bonus and a $5,000 expense account.
Smith’s organization, meanwhile, has become a small army unto itself, staffing a senior vice president of communications, a senior vice president of planning and development, a chief creative officer, a director of marketing, a director of economic development, a development director, a transportation planning consultant, a director of research, a director of Historic South End, an office administrator and, of course, an executive assistant to the president.
Center City Partners also has received $500,000 in direct funding over the last three years from the city and county to oversee the Center City 2020 Vision Plan. Among the group’s accomplishments: coordinating the infamous land-swap deal to bring a minor league baseball stadium to uptown.
The ASC receives about $2.9 million a year in direct funding from the city, while the CRVA rolls up another $3 million, funded by its slice of the hotel/motel tax and a 1 percent tax on prepared food and beverages. Its chief, Tim Newman, is paid about $300,000 a year in salary and bonus, plus a car allowance.
In addition to managing the NASCAR Hall of Fame, the CRVA also manages city-owned buildings like Ovens Auditorium and Bojangles’ Coliseum, two other perennial money-losing ventures.
The Charlotte Regional Partnership, with its offices ironically located in the sparkling new NASCAR officer tower beside the racing museum, is tasked with the ambiguous job of promoting the greater Charlotte region and luring businesses to the same. It receives about half of its funding from contributing businesses and about half from tax dollars pulled from 16 participating counties and towns, including Charlotte and Mecklenburg Country, which ponied up a combined $300,000 this year. Its chief executive, Ronnie Bryant, is paid nearly $320,000 a year in salary and benefits.
“It may be, after one or two meetings, we determine that these entities, from our perspective, are functioning as well as they can and that we shouldn’t make any recommendations,” Barnes said of the council’s planned review. “It may also be that we’ll discover there are things we would recommend to be changed.”
Republican Councilmember Warren Cooksey said he hoped a review of the financial partner groups would include a comprehensive look at what tangible results they have produced in the past, as well as delving into the contractual and legal relationships the city has with each group.
When he served as the council’s appointee to the convention and visitor’s bureau board, Cooksey said, he was “stunned” that the “contracts that existed between the city of Charlotte and the non-profit CVB that transferred millions of dollars for sales and marketing included no performance requirements related to what the bureau did.”
While the city funds groups like Center City Partners and the CRVA and appoints/approves members to sit on their boards of directors – including members of the city council and the board of commissioners – the groups function for the most part as private operations with little hands-on oversight from elected officials.
The exception, as Mayor Anthony Foxx noted Monday night, is an annual review of the groups’ budgets as part of the city’s overall budget process. The review that the council approved undertaking Monday night, Foxx said, is similar to what it does every year, only starting the process earlier and possibly digging a little deeper.
“We’ll probably find that, as we think about efficiencies, we’ve essentially outsourced the work on those efficiencies to boards, through these organizations, to run their own businesses,” Foxx, a Democrat, said. “Whether those relationships are ones that council wants to have move forward or not is a separate question.
“Those boards more or less handle their own operations,” Foxx said. “Our decision points are probably still going to be, at the end of the day, whether to fund or not fund and at what level.”
We need your help! If you like PunditHouse, please consider donating to us. Even $5 a month can make a difference!
Short URL: https://pundithouse.com/?p=4464
