BOCC: WLU ACC
For the acronym-challenged reader, that headline translates as Board of County Commissioners: We Love You Atlantic Coast Conference.
To the tune of a quarter of a million dollars, no less, which is how much taxpayer loot commissioners doled out this week to help score some image-branding points and economic development jolt supposedly tied to the ACC’s gridiron championship game played at Bank of America Stadium.
Consider it a case of love delayed. Back when the city was originally courting the ACC Football Championship, the county had agreed to kick in $250,000, part of a $450,000 sponsorship package shared with the Charlotte Regional Visitors Authority. When the county hit a bump in its budget road, the CRVA picked up the whole tab.
Flash forward a few years and the tables have turned, with the CRVA now claiming it can no longer afford to foot the whole bill (an annual $10 million-plus budget, after all, only goes so far). The cost of the sponsorship, meanwhile, has increased to $500,000.
Enter the board of commissioners with its dose of largess. The county, it turns out, had a spare $250,000 lingering in its economic development grant fund, the result of a previously approved project not being ready to launch on schedule. And with government being government, having extra cash collecting dust in the coffers would not do.
“This is kind of a no net-dollar increase to the county, because those economic development grants won’t come to fruition this year,” said Commissioner Neil Cooksey, a Republican. “That’s how I could get comfortable supporting this.”
Cooksey was joined by Republican commissioners Karen Bentley and Jim Penergraph and Democrat commissioners George Dunlap, Vilma Leake, Dumont Clarke, and Harold Cogdell in supporting the spend. Republican Commissioner Bill James and Commissioners Chairman Jennifer Roberts, a Democrat, voted in dissent.
“My concern,” Roberts said, “is that there are other tournaments or groups that come to us and they know that we have a budget cycle, and that we do this in the spring, and we can compare other needs, requirements, and requests.”
By way of example, Roberts noted that as part of this year’s budget cycle commissioners had eliminated funding for the Nextel NASCAR All-Star Race, an event that in previous years the board had routinely awarded an $85,000 economic development grant.
Amazingly, when commissioners cut funding for the event, the race didn’t suddenly abandon the synergistic NASCAR Valley as its home. Similarly, there’s no demonstrable evidence that the ACC Football Championship would bolt for greener fields without an extra $250,000 sponsorship from the county.
Indeed, with heavy corporate sponsorship already secured, the game is likely anchored in Charlotte for the next several years. But that’s no reason for Team GovCo to sit on the sidelines, commissioners argued.
“This is a really unique situation where public and private entities have come together,” Bentley said. “I think it sends a very good message to the ACC leadership that this community, from a broad base of support, is supportive of hopefully a long-term contract with the ACC.”
That message, however, might not have been the only one that was being sent. Leake and Dunlap repeatedly emphasized that the $250,000 grant for the ACC Football Championship was $50,000 more than the annual grant the county provides for the CIAA basketball tourney. And the days-long hoops extravaganza, those same commissioners noted, packs a bigger punch, pumping $40 million in overall economic impact into the region.
Which begs the question: are Leake and Dunlap using the ACC to set up the CIAA for a $50,000 bump in grant funding come next year’s budget cycle?
In any event, last year’s ACC Football Championship reportedly produced direct visitor spending of about $9 million and an overall economic impact of $13 million. Similar results are expected again, tourism officials said, promising a solid return on investment for the county’s $250,000 grant.
“When the board voted to de-fund some of the economic development opportunities [in this year’s budget], I voted against that for this very reason, such as the economic impact on our community,” Dunlap said. “In our economic condition I just don’t think, given what we invest and what comes back into this community, when we can afford it, it is not wise to potentially pass up on a $9 million economic development impact.”
As an added bonus, tourism boosters gushed, the ACC Football Championship helps bolster the Queen City’s world-class destination profile. The game is nationally televised, informs a pitch letter sent to commissioners, and last year’s “broadcast included several shots of the skyline and references to what a great city Charlotte has become.”
“As we are excited about opportunities to continue to brand this city, this county and this region, both nationally and internationally,” Cogdell said, “this is just another example of branding at work, if you will.”
Well, maybe; while last year’s game, which pitted Virginia Tech against Florida State, was a sell-out at the gate, it pulled only a scant 3 million viewers, the second lowest rated ACC Football Championship in the event’s six-year history. But who knows? Maybe the county’s $250,000 grant will provide enough extra marketing mojo to make this year’s game a TV blockbuster.
Hope springs eternal when you’re spending other people’s money.
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