Minutes 03-18-2025-Business Meeting

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41 Commissioner Greene said in the terms of the operating budget, she feels strongly that this aspect is going well. She said they are trying to market to new markets. She said she supports keeping the budget the way it is. Commissioner McKee said a key factor is the better the Visitors Bureau does, the better small businesses in the county do. He said if the economy goes south, the revenues go with it. He said they do not have major retail bringing people in and rather have arts and programs that bring people in. He said people would not know about this without the Visitors Bureau. He said he has seen the amount of work that goes into getting a program developed to advertise and he agrees with Commissioner Greene and would not want to tweak something that doesn't have a problem. Vice-Chair Hamilton said she supports the Visitors Bureau and the work that it does. She said it makes sense to her for part of the occupancy tax to be available for other parts of the county. She said that visitors won't have a good experience in the county without the infrastructure and services. She said she looks at all the revenue the county gets and how are they going to put it to its best use. She said they are going into a budget situation that is going to be very challenging. She said it is not economically efficient to have different buckets of revenue and has further questions about why it is separate, but ultimately thinks there could be better uses that are in line with state statutes that would help them reduce the tax burden on residents and the general fund. She said she supports option 2. Commissioner Fowler had a question on slide #5. She asked if the green was marketing primarily. Kirk Vaughn said that is the advertising, the market research, promotions, and programmatic expenses of the department. Commissioner Fowler said it would be nice to track and see if they are getting their return on investment over the next few years. Laurie Paolicelli, Visitors Bureau Director, said that can be tracked. She said that she and the Economic Development team can bring tourism more to the conversations moving forward. She said she can bring that information to the Board. She said they get requests from other visitors'centers to partner with them. She said that outside users of facilities need assistance with planning events. She discussed some of the many things that the Visitors Bureau does to market events and businesses. She discussed the start of the Visitors Bureau. She said that the Visitors Bureau board does not believe that occupancy tax should not be used for capital, and they believe that the current structure works. Commissioner Fowler said she sees one option has meeting their needs. She asked if they continued to have ongoing needs. She asked if they are still feeling held back. She said that earlier there were people asking for help with water and the Board must deal with the needs of the entire community. Laurie Paolicelli said that there is increased demand for their services, and expenditures continue to grow but expenses also have increased. She introduced Hanna Hemphill, budget director to discuss the increase on the slide. Hannah Hemphill said they have received increased funding from the Town of Chapel Hill. She said they have been able to increase some funding based on that. She said they have had increased programmatic expenses with things like soccer tournaments and music festivals. She said they have participated in other events throughout the year. She said some of the programmatic increase is because of the drawdown of fund balance that Kirk was talking about. Kirk Vaughn said they accumulated a fund balance and that spending that shows an increase. Chair Bedford said there is a slide that shows they are still accumulating. Laurie Paolicelli said the Town of Chapel Hill's partnership gives the Bureau $200,000 per year and then 50% of anything over a million dollars. She said that went immediately to the