The Village of South Jacksonville appears like its cutting down on all donation spending.
The Board of Trustees have been exploring ways to handle donation requests from various organizations that do not fall under the umbrella of the village’s tourism ordinance. The village collects substantial hotel & motel taxes. The taxes are then supposed to be used to promote events and concepts that will bring people to stay in South Jacksonville – it’s often been referred to as a “heads on beds” approach to the grants. Organizations that have events that court visitors from outside the Jacksonville area in substantial numbers often request grant funds in order to promote and put on those events.
The village trustees have explored in the last several months ways to handle other requests for other types of causes, events, and organizations like the area’s food banks among other items. In working with Village Attorney Rob Cross, trustees discussed the set up of a discretionary spending account under the village’s purview to handle these other requests at their January 23rd committee of the whole session.
Village Treasurer Mindy Olsen raised some objections to the creation of this type of account: “My concern is where is the money going to come from. When you do a budget, you have to make sure everything is accounted for, so if we decide to take say $8,000 to set up a discretionary account to be used for whatever, we have to reduce another line item somewhere. We would have to determine where that [money] is going to come from – supplies, maintenance, communications, salaries – our budgets are pretty specific in what we pay for. So, if you are going to take money out of one place for creating something new, you would have to take it from somewhere. Who would oversee it? Of course, the board would ultimately oversee it. What would be their criteria for giving the money away? Who would you give it to? I think one of the things that [Village Attorney] Rob Cross said is that you would want to make sure that none of the current board members are sitting on a board of directors on who you decide to give the money to. One of the things that I put in [our written communication] is that we just raised water rates to cover our operational needs for our water account and now we are talking about setting up a discretionary account to just give money out.”
Trustee J.W. Coleman agreed with Olsen and says he also has concerns about changing the tourism grant ordinance to accommodate more requests: “I don’t think we should be robbing Peter to pay Paul. I believe it opens up a lot of…kind of a Pandora’s Box. I’ve said it a number of times that where we do not need to be a non-profit type of organization that does that, in my opinion. Now, I know this will probably circle back around to what we have talked about with the tourism and opening that up. That terrifies me still. Anyway, I don’t think this is the time and place to be doing anything like that. In my opinion, I agree that the funding and everybody’s wallets are tight, everything’s gone up, we had to raise water rates. I think the proof is in the pudding. We were seeing a negative balance every month.”
Coleman added that the village is also facing the expense of renovation of the village’s water tower within the year that’s expected to cost over $1 million.
Trustee Steve Retzer says that village shouldn’t be giving tax money away while families are struggling to pay their bills: “I just look at how can I look eye to eye with a young couple who is struggling to meet bills, charge them what I charge them for water, and then give money away. I just…I can’t get behind it.”
Retzer suggested that the discretionary account should be pulled as a future action item from the next agenda.