Funding for the Tennessee Williams Home and Welcome Center is up in the air after the Columbus Cultural Heritage Foundation on Monday rejected an $81,000 grant for this fiscal year from the Columbus-Lowndes Convention and Visitors Bureau. But that money came with a contract – and terms – attached to it.
CCHF owns and operates the welcome center.
CCHF Chairwoman Brenda Willis told The Dispatch Friday the foundation’s board was surprised by the contract, which contributed to the rejection.
“I guess you should never assume you’re going to be funded, but in the past, there’s never been any question,” Willis said. “We’ve never been sent a contract. … And they fund a lot of other things. Do they send everyone a contract or have we been singled out?”
CVB attorney John Brady told The Dispatch Thursday that he advised the visitor’s bureau board to draw up a contract for the first time this year, since he thought it would be wise to keep expectations clear and in writing. He said the contract is “new territory” for the groups, since they only recently split in March 2023.
Before then, both boards included the same members, as required by the foundation’s bylaws. But in January 2023, the Mississippi Ethics Commission issued an opinion that the boards must separate to prevent conflicts in financial decision-making.
CCHF Chief Executive Officer Nancy Carpenter told the city council during a public hearing in August that Mississippi Department of Transportation donated the Tennessee Williams home to the city in 2008. At that time, CCHF was established to own the building, Carpenter said.
CVB provided about $101,000 to the foundation for its operations last fiscal year, Brady said. The CVB’s fiscal year starts on Oct. 1.
This fiscal year, CCHF requested $132,000 from the visitors bureau, Brady said. The CVB board met twice to consider that request, he said, before deciding to designate $81,000 in its budget for the home with the contract attached to it.
“The funding that we agreed to give them was funding that was necessary for the operations of the Tennessee Williams home,” CVB board president Liz Terry said. “ … Anything beyond that, I think, was the cutback.”
State law says the visitors bureau can fund the operation or maintenance of any visitor information center owned by a nonprofit or government entity. Other expenses by a nonprofit are not addressed in the law. An August 2023 ruling by Attorney General Lynn Fitch stated that the CVB has the authority to provide funding to the CCHF in accordance with the law.
Funding terms
The terms of the contract would have required CCHF to provide CVB with a budget for the funding and proof of how the money was spent, Brady said. It also stated the funding could only be used for the home and could not be used for the CCHF executive director’s salary – as it has been used in the past.
Terry said these terms were simply about sticking to the law and putting some accountability measures into writing.
“We give money to other entities, and there’s some accountability to us on how the money is spent or how it’s intended to be spent, and the board didn’t feel like there was any reason why the foundation shouldn’t be accountable as well,” Terry said.
Willis said she didn’t know where those requirements were coming from.
“T.E. Lott does our financials,” Willis said. “We’ve never heard of any misuse of funds.”
The contract would have also required CCHF to provide CVB with access to its board meetings and to the Tennessee Williams home. Terry said these terms would have allowed the CVB to keep up with CCHF and to take photos of the home for marketing purposes.
Willis said CCHF has never “denied anything they asked of us.” But she said the terms showed the CVB was “basically” acting like it owned the Tennessee Williams home.
“It’s the same things they were doing before that the ethics commission and the attorney general ruled on (it),” Willis said.
The contract also stated that the funds would be paid out in monthly increments, Brady said, only if the welcome center was open the first business day of the month with the intention of staying open the entire month.
The Tennessee Williams home has been closed since April for renovations. Carpenter told The Dispatch in July that the renovations would be done by the end of August.
But when workers got under the home, Willis said, they found more issues that extended the timeline of the work and ballooned the project’s costs from around $200,000 to $300,000. Carpenter spent the summer fundraising to cover the additional costs, Willis said.
Willis said the foundation is planning to reopen the home in November. After that, it hopes to keep the home open for its typical operating hours.
Without funding from the CVB, Willis said CCHF has already started to look for other funding sources for the home and its three staff members, though she would not share those potential funding sources. The foundation is also still willing to come back to the table with the visitors bureau, she said.
Willis expressed hope the CVB would eventually fund the welcome center.
“We’re willing to talk about what their concerns may be, as far as that agreement goes, but we’re not necessarily going to try to force them to take the money,” Terry said.
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