Cash flow

By Charles Sowell  

MAY 9, 2011 11:25 a.m. (0)

A dispute between Spartanburg County Council and the recreation department comes down to either a failure to come through on expected projects or a failure to communicate accurately the department’s intentions, officials said recently.

County council ordered a recreation department audit in April and voted to amend the ordinance creating the recreation commission in a move that would bring the department under the supervision of County Administrator Glenn Breed. The recreation commission would remain to handle run-of-the-mill issues.

Council Chairman Jeff Horton said the county’s issues with how the recreation department is run stem mainly from a lack of progress on big-ticket projects like Va-

Du-Mar McMillan Regional Park at Boiling Springs.

“We had a family donate the land for Va-Du-Mar and it’s still not up and running,” Horton said. “People have a right to expect action on these things.”

He said recreation department director Jeff Caton is squarely in the council’s crosshairs right now.

“I blame a lot of this on Caton,” he said.

Caton and Recreation Commission Chairman Bruce Johnson said there has been a lot of misinformation floating around concerning the costs of projects and admitted they may not have done a good enough job of communicating their goals in some areas.

Johnson said the commission and council members are still talking about the best ways to resolve the situation.

The proverbial straw in the long-simmering dispute between council and the recreation department centers on a request to bring some administrative functions purely within the department, said Councilman David Britt.

Council decisively rejected that request and went on to order the audit and amendment to the ordinance creating the commission.

“I think some folks on council focused on the ‘autonomous’ part of the phrase ‘semi-autonomous’ in our letter about why we wanted to bring some functions in house. The plan would have realized a considerable savings to taxpayers,” he said.

Johnson said the department has made good progress on the major capital projects on their plate, among them Tyger River regional sports complex designed to host tournaments and provide athletic facilities for the western side of the county. It is due to open in late September.

Council created the recreation commission in 2006 and the hospitality tax passed was to fund improvements to recreational infrastructure.

The hospitality tax is levied on food and drink prepared within the county and funds generated by the tax must be used for projects with tourism-related impact, like big regional parks that can host large tournaments.

Spartanburg County’s two percent hospitality tax went into effect on Jan. 1, 2008 and generates between $2 million and $3 million annually.

Johnson said many people are under the impression the hospitality tax’s passage meant big-ticket projects planned by recreation department could start immediately.

“Fact of the matter is we had to wait until we had a year’s worth of revenue in hand in order to issue bonds based on the tax,” he said. “Then we had to enter into a design phase that took about a year. So we’re getting things done pretty quickly, all things considered.”

Considering Johnson’s time line, the Tyger River Park is to be completed in good time and within the budget, documents provided by Caton show.

Those documents show Tyger River’s total cost will be about $14.9 million. That’s a far cry from the nearly $19 million figure that has been bandied about in some reports, Caton said.

Starting from nearly zero, except for Cleveland Park and a few other facilities, the recreation department today manages more than 700 acres of developed and undeveloped parklands. That includes three regional parks, five community parks and 12 athletic parks.

The athletic parks contain 35 baseball/softball fields; one baseball field for special needs children; 15 soccer fields and six multi-purpose football/soccer fields; two indoor basketball courts and one outdoor court; 15 tennis courts; a BMX track; one disc golf course and seven playgrounds.

Gene Smith, director of the Greenville County Recreation Department, said there are lots of similarities in the building program Greenville has ongoing and Spartanburg’s.

Both are based on hospitality tax revenue and both are overseen by county council, which has the ultimate say-so on what gets done and what doesn’t.

But Greenville’s recreation department is considerably larger and has a budget of about $12 million based on tax millage. Spartanburg also has a tax millage to support day-to-day operations that generates about $5 million annually.

The major difference, Smith and Caton agree, rests in the fact that Greenville’s recreation tax district was created by the state Legislature. Spartanburg’s recreation district is purely a creature of the county.

“We’re the only recreation district in the state created by a county,” Caton said.

Britt said he’d like to see the recreation district concentrate more on providing recreation opportunities to residents now and concentrate less on the big regional venues.

The problem with that, said Johnson, is that hospitality tax funds must be spent on projects with a significant tourism impact.

“In the law creating the hospitality tax, five of the six requirements mention the word tourism. The other one deals with beach renourishment. In order to use the money we have to show a tourism impact,” he said. “Spartanburg residents get considerable advantage since they have free use of the facilities when tournaments are not being held.”

County budget documents for capital improvements at recreation through 2015 show expenditures of about $25.5 million for work at various regional parks and on a planned trail system.

Council has final say on all of recreation projects, Caton said.

He used the council’s rejection of a plan to spend $1.6 million to pay for a building that would have been used for office space, public meetings and events.

Horton and Britt said the recreation department, like all parts of county government has to learn to live within their means.