The Columbus-Lowndes Convention and Visitors Bureau isn’t dead, but it is in intensive care, CVB Board of Trustees president DeWitt Hicks said Monday.
The CVB board slashed its Fiscal Year 2019 budget by more than two-thirds during its annual retreat, which was held at Burnt Oak Lodge in Crawford.
After reviewing the changes to the budget necessary to keep the CVB solvent after the loss of its major funding source — the 2-percent restaurant sales tax, which expired in June because the Legislature did not renew it — the board approved the new budget by an unanimous vote. The CVB fiscal year runs from Oct. 1 through Sept. 30.
The 2019 budget of $644,912 will be funded by cash reserves of $594,000 along with $50,000 in grants from the Mississippi Development Authority and the Mississippi Department of Archives and History. That starkly contrasts with CVB’s $1.8 million for FY 2018.
Of the new budget, more than a third ($241,243) will go to salaries and related expenses.
After an executive session to discuss a personnel item, the CVB board voted unanimously to maintain the salary of the CVB’s executive director, Nancy Carpenter, at its current $99,568.
Carpenter’s salary will account for more than 15 percent of the 2019 budget.
“Ms. Carpenter had done a splendid job as executive director,” Hicks said after the vote. “We encourage her, regardless of whether or not we are funded, to continue to do the incredible job she’s been doing.”
Hicks said after the meeting that Carpenter, who has two years left in her contract, said she wanted the board to keep her at her current salary. Hicks said according to the contract, the board had the discretion to raise her salary by 2 to 5 percent.
At the end of May, CVB eliminated two full-time positions, including one vacant position, and a part-time position, reducing payroll from $302,496 to $200,525 annually. Monday, another $7,694 in salaries were part-time work that has been reallocated to the Welcome Center. Among the biggest cuts in the new budget were for marketing/advertising ($255,600), Columbus Cultural Heritage Foundation support ($224,522), funding for the Golden Triangle Development LINK ($210,000) and local grants ($79,5000). The local grants, used to support a variety of festivals, was eliminated entirely.
Earlier, the board’s revised budget for 2018 eliminated funding for those festivals yet to take place in the current fiscal year, which ends Sept. 30, including Artesia Days, Caledonia Days, Seventh Avenue Heritage Festival and the Tennessee Williams Tribute.
In addition to salaries, the biggest budget expenditures in the 2019 budget remain marketing/advertising ($169,400) and CCHF support ($23,314).
The CCHF support includes non-Pilgrimage events such as Catfish in the Alley, Ghosts and Legends, the Double-Decker Bus and non-annual events such as Fireworks on the Water and the Air Force Thunderbirds.
There is no funding for any of those events in the 2019 CVB budget.
Carpenter said the Double-Decker Bus will remain in CVB possession, but will not be used for events. Likewise, the Fireworks on the Water, which is scheduled for 2019, will be replaced by another Fourth of July event, Carpenter said.
“Fireworks on the Water has zero funding in this budget, but we are going to have a Fourth of July Parade on Saturday downtown,” Carpenter said. “We’ll have bicycles, home-made ice cream, just a good old-fashioned event. It will be wonderful, but it will be different.”
Carpenter reiterated that the annual Pilgrimage will continue.
“We’re having a Pilgrimage and it will be great,” she said.
Monday’s dramatic budget workshop — Hicks called it “dramatic and traumatic” — is a response to the loss of the 2-percent sales tax revenue, a loss Hicks still laments.
“The best analogy I know is imagine if you took care of yourself, exercised, ate right and still had a heart attack,” Hicks said. “That’s kind of where we are. We may be in intensive care, but we’re not dead yet. So let’s regroup, rejuvenate and move forward and make sure we don’t stay in intensive care.”
Slim Smith is a columnist and feature writer for The Dispatch. His email address is [email protected].
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