As construction continues on High Point’s taxpayer-funded downtown stadium— with April 2019 as the opening date—the High Point Enterprise reports on the “spat” between city officials and the Convention and Visitors Bureau over the CVB’s “very generous unsolicited gift to the City of $250,000 per year for 20 years.”
You can read the back-and-forth emails between city and CVB officials yourself, but the bottom line is this is a matter of semantics—apparently the city believes it would be a waste of good red tape to give the CVB money it was only going to hand right back to the city, so the city just lopped the $250,000 off the CVB’s budget, which is funded by Guilford County’s occupancy tax. When the CVB took issue, Mayor Jay Wagner issued what could be construed as a threat, warning the CVB that “continued friction and argument over this issue may cause some members of council to contemplate possible alternatives” for convention and tourism services.
Needless to say the CVB did not like this one bit, and in response “have considered approaching state lawmakers to amend the local bill that established the occupancy tax to make the CVB — and not the city — the custodian of the funds.”
Stay tuned.
