Lincoln City Council
Aldermen approve funding for Logan County Tourism Bureau for 2025

 

[December 17, 2024] 

At the Monday, December 16th voting session of the Lincoln City Council, aldermen, after some discussion agreed to maintain the annual funding for the Logan County Tourism Bureau at 95 percent of the total hotel/motel tax taken in by the city.

Tourism Director Alice (Roate) McCray had presented her request for the annual funding at the December 10th Committee of the Whole meeting, noting that for the last few years the city has funded the bureau, giving it 95 percent of the money received from the tax. The other five percent was kept in city coffers to fund local projects such as the Third Friday Downtown events.

After the request was made, Alderman Kevin Bateman said that he would like to see the city decrease the percentage to the tourism bureau by five or even 10 percent, making for a larger portion for the city. He said that currently the city has kept $6,600 in the past seven months of the fiscal year. He said that comparatively, if the city dropped the percentage to the bureau by 5 percent, that $6K would double. He said the city needs the money in order to keep moving forward with tourism initiatives specific to the city, including the Third Fridays, and also maintenance on some of the downtown murals.

Bateman said he would estimate that if the city kept 15 percent of the tax, it would total roughly $20,000 in the year. He told the council that there was a time when the city had money left over in the tourism account, but that money has mostly been spent, and now the excess in the line item is only a couple of thousand dollars. He said the city needs to focus more of the tax money on the city, because Lincoln constituents expect the alderman to look out for the best interests of the town.

The discussion moved on to the fact that the all the money coming to the city is from city motels and hotels, yet the funding going to the tourism bureau is to be used county wide. It was mentioned that the only other town in the county with motels is Atlanta, and that community keeps its own tax and has its own tourism bureau.

McCray was asked where the money was being spent within the bureau. She said that there is a great deal of money going to advertising and promotion of all tourism in Logan County. Another big draw out of the tourism coffers is wages for herself and her assistant.

There was a suggestion from Bateman that perhaps it was time for the city to take over the tourism bureau entirely. He said that McCray and her assistant would then become city employees with city benefits.

It was noted by McCray that the Logan County Tourism Bureau is a state certified tourism bureau because it serves the entire county. If the bureau became city focused, then the grant funding from the state would go away, and there would be lost opportunities for special grants such as the $100,000 route 66 grant the bureau recently received.

Alderwoman Wanda Lee Rohlfs asked city treasurer Chuck Conzo to talk about how the dollar amounts have changed over the last few years. Conzo said that overall, tax revenue from the hotel/motel tax has decreased. He said that losing two colleges had an impact on the motel stays as well as the Coronavirus pandemic. He said the decrease was not terribly dramatic, but nonetheless it was indeed less that pre-Covid and before the colleges closed.

Conzo went on to say that currently, on a monthly basis, the city keeps about $700 to $800 per month on the average.

Alderman Sam Downs is one of the mayoral appointed voting members of the Logan County Tourism Bureau along with Steve Parrott. Downs spoke up saying that he understood where Bateman was coming from in wanting and needing more money for local initiatives, but he was not in favor of taking that money from the tourism bureau. He said that the bureau does a lot of good for the city and the county and he doesn’t want to hurt their efforts.

Alderwoman Robin McClallen asked McCray to estimate how much of the money received is invested in Lincoln and how much is sent to other communities. McCray said she didn’t have numbers off the top of her head, but she could say that the majority of the money is spent in Lincoln activities because Lincoln is the largest community in the county and has Route 66 and Abraham Lincoln.

Parrott also spoke saying he too was not in favor of hurting the tourism bureau. He said that it was the case of if something isn’t broken don’t fix it. He said the bureau does a good job of promoting Lincoln and getting “our name out there.”

McCray had mentioned plans for Lincoln including some large Lincoln letters in the welcome garden and a large donut in the parking lot of Mel-O-Cream. Alderman Craig Eimer asked why the tourism bureau would finance a donut at Mel-O-Cream. She said that the idea was that it would tie into the giants that are so popular in Atlanta, would be a photo op and would say Route 66 on it. She also said that the money for those two would come from the Route 66 grant and not the hotel/motel tax, because the grant has a zero match.

The December 10th discussion ended with the recommendation that the action item on the next agenda would be to fund the tourism bureau at the full 95 percent.

On Monday, when the motion came up and was made, Bateman immediately moved for an amendment to fund the bureau at 90 percent instead of 95. That motion was seconded and discussion ensued, where Parrott put out a new idea.

He noted that currently the city pays the hotel/motel tax to the bureau, and the bureau pays $900 per month in rent for the use of the depot. He suggested that instead of taking away money from the bureau that the city withhold the rent payment and keep that amount in the city’s tourism line.

Currently the $900 is going into the city’s general fund and is a part of the revenue that pays for general operating costs of the city of Lincoln. It was noted that the city owns the depot free and clear with the only expense being maintenance.

After some discussion on how to make that kind of change in a clean and transparent manner, Conzo said that within the general fund there is a line for city events. He said instead of withhold the $900 from the payment to the bureau, the check received from the bureau for rent could be placed in that specific line item and used for whatever the city needed to use it for within the constraints of the line item.

Putting the $900 into a designated use line item would come to about $11,000 per year on top of the estimated $6,600 per year that would be withheld from the get-go. All the aldermen, including Bateman appeared to be pleased with the suggestion, and Bateman withdrew his motion to amend the amount paid to tourism, which left the percentage of hotel/motel tax paid to the bureau at 95 percent.

With that Mayor Tracy Welch called for the vote, and the motion to continue funding at 95 percent for the next year was passed unanimously.

[Nila Smith]