Wednesday, December 31, 2003
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Wednesday, December 31, 2003 |
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PTC sees balanced budget for tennis center By J. FRANK LYNCH Picking up where they left off, the Peachtree City Tourism Association is proceeding with plans to run the Frederick Brown Jr. Amphitheater and Peachtree City Tennis Center, plans sidelined a month ago by two lame-duck city council members. City Manager Bernard McMullen, who serves on the inaugural Tourism Board of Directors, said a City Council with two new members will be asked on Monday to approve a budget for the non-profit group starting Jan. 19 and continuing through Sept. 30, the end of the city’s fiscal year. But one of the councilmen to be sworn in Monday, Judi-ann Rutherford, has said she will recuse herself from considering Tourism Association business until her employment situation is settled once and for all. Rutherford has resigned her job as office manager of the amphitheater effective Friday, Jan. 2. McMullen wouldn’t indicate whether she was clear to be rehired after Jan. 19, adding that the Tourism Association still must consider policies regarding hiring and staffing before it can advertise to fill her job and other vacancies. “But it does seem like things are moving along positively for a change,” said McMullen, who has taken the lead in creating the Tourism Association to take on duties formally held by the city’s Development Authority. The Tourism Association was set to meet Tuesday night for the first time since late November, to consider budget changes made necessary by the city’s temporary employment of workers at the venues. One positive effect in the delay in transferring management to the Tourism Association has been a fine-tuning of the Tennis Center budget, which makes the facility 100 percent self-sustaining, McMullen said. Previously, the Tennis Center was budgeted to use as much as $100,000 in city hotel-motel tax money as a revenue cushion in case of shortfalls later next year. “In actuality when you look at the Tennis Center budget, October through the early part of January is when they ran a deficit and the remainder of the year is when they ran a surplus,” McMullen said. “So when you look at the eight months ahead you can manage it without hotel-motel tax money. The revenue is there.” Additionally, revenue from the operation of the Tennis Center Pro Shop was not factored into the original budget plan, said McMullen. Former DAPC Executive Director Virgil Christian owned the rent-free lease on the pro shop and kept any revenues, but a request for proposals being shopped around to potential tenants calls for the facility to generate a minimum of $2,500 monthly in rent, starting in February. The amphitheater was already proposed to be self-supporting through 2004. That leaves the hundreds of thousands in revenue from the hotel-motel tax available for other tourism-related expenses, said McMullen, many of which are covered in the city’s general fund now. Doubts about the non-profit, tax-exempt status of the Tourism Association are also less of a concern, McMullen said. The application that tax-free status has been considered by the IRS, said McMullen. “We’ve received correspondence with our tax consultants, and we’ve gotten positive feedback through them from the IRS.” Pending IRS approval, the board of directors will move forward with the final submission of paperwork required to manage the guest tax revenue, McMullen said.
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