OneColumbia will get money to finish out year without meal tax dollars

Money from Columbia’s general fund will fill the gap for the OneColumbia arts advocacy group to carry out its functions through the end of the financial year, City Council decided Tuesday.

The group was short money after auditors determined that meal tax, or hospitality tax, dollars are ineligible to cover some of the arts promotion group’s expenses.

City Council decided Tuesday to give the group $83,800 out of the city’s general operating budget to cover costs through the end of June. The costs include office rent, utilities and operating expenses, which don’t qualify for reimbursement using meal tax dollars, the city’s 2 percent tax on prepared meals and beverages that is designed to support projects that drive tourism.

OneColumbia was created to centralize advocacy and coordination of Columbia’s cultural events and to market them to tourists.

The group has been almost fully funded by the city’s meal tax dollars at an average of more than $134,000 a year for its first five years of operation. At least one external audit, however, recently flagged the group for submitting ineligible reimbursements for thousands of dollars of meal tax money, including for food and beverages, office rent and the entirety of executive director Lee Snelgrove’s $50,000 salary.

OneColumbia has since reimbursed the city for its food and beverage expenses, Mayor Steve Benjamin said at Tuesday afternoon’s council work session.

The $83,800 coming from the general fund to cover the second half of the year’s expenses represents about half of OneColumbia’s budget for the year, said Libby Gober, assistant to City Council. Gober oversees reimbursement requests submitted by about 85 cultural and entertainment organizations that get a share of the $10.5 million the meal tax is expected to generate this fiscal year.

In discussions Tuesday afternoon, council members indicated they might be willing to support partially funding OneColumbia moving forward as a line item in the general fund budget to make up for its expenses that legally cannot be paid by meal tax dollars. Doing so could also free up more than $80,000 in meal tax funding that could then be allocated to other cultural organizations.

That will be an issue taken up in coming weeks as city staff assembles the budget for the 2016-17 financial year.

In light of the red flags brought to light concerning OneColumbia’s meal tax spending, council is working on nailing down the scope of a review of all meal tax recipients’ spending. Earlier this month, Benjamin was the only council member to vote against a such a review.

At Tuesday’s work session, council members asked city staff to determine the cost for an outside accountant to review all receipts submitted by all organizations that were reimbursed with meal tax dollars in the 2014-15 financial year, as well as review the council’s internal transfer of meal tax dollars to the general fund.

“I think it would be good for the public’s perception of the program if we had an outside auditor come in and look and report back to the council that things are going well or that there’s exceptions that need to be taken care of,” Councilman Howard Duvall said.

This story was originally published April 19, 2016 at 7:14 PM with the headline "OneColumbia will get money to finish out year without meal tax dollars."