Who pays what? That’s the question facing the Eureka Springs City Advertising and Promotion Commission.
At the CAPC’s monthly workshop held Wednesday, Nov, 12, budget talks for 2026 took a pause until the commission gets more clarification on what its financial responsibilities are when it comes to The Auditorium.
For the past handful of years, the CAPC has been paying all facility utilities and most of the maintenance costs of the nearly 100-year-old building, with the understanding that a legal agreement was in place with the city outlining financial responsibilities.
However, it recently came to light that the most recent agreement that city officials say they have on file went into effect on Jan. 1, 2019, and states that the city would be responsible for utilities and maintenance.
Less than five minutes into the workshop, the conversation landed on the the topic of The Aud.
“Are we going to be reimbursed for the years we paid utilities and maintenance and where there’s a letter of agreement that says we didn’t have to, and not one that replaced it?” commissioner Heather Wilson asked, referring to the thought that a new agreement was signed when the CAPC office staff moved into offices in The Auditorium in late 2021.
“I’m going to bring up the elephant in the room because I got a lot of calls about that and obviously it was in the paper,” Wilson said. “It was said on the record twice that there was another agreement and there wasn’t, and so for six years, the CAPC has been paying utilities and maintenance when there’s an agreement and it is the last one on file with the city.”
Why the city hasn’t brought up the situation is an issue as well, Wilson said.
“No one at the city spoke up and said: ‘Wait a minute. There was one. Somebody signed it. We don’t have it on file.’ But, the bottom line is the one the city says they have says they are responsible for paying. Unless there’s something that supersedes that, why are we continuing to pay?”
Commission chair Steve Holifield said he and CAPC director Mike Maloney were going to meet with Mayor Butch Berry before the monthly regular CAPC meeting scheduled for Thursday, Nov. 20, and hope to get some answers.
“Apparently there was other agreements made, some signed, some weren’t signed,” Holifield said. “So, until we get all the information together, and Mike told me he’s looking up some past meeting minutes and stuff. So, once we get to all the facts and what we can produce in paper or at least on video to say, this is everything, because right now I know there is some agreements that were made when they moved back in here, by [former CAPC chair] Jeff Carter.”
If it’s not in writing, it can’t be administered, Wilson said.
“Unless it’s in writing, anything could have been said verbally,” she said. “Unless there are signatures, and I understand that people from the past may have signed things, but they weren’t countersigned, that is an issue.
“I mean, I’m kind of gobsmacked that more people are not, at this table, more concerned about this, to be honest. This is years of paying utilities that potentially the CAPC shouldn’t have been having to pay, and I’m just flabbergasted that no one at the city flagged this and said: ‘Wait a minute, there’s been a change of guard, let’s make sure that the agreements that are in place, let’s review this with the new person coming in.’ I’m floored, and I’m sorry, we’re talking six figures worth of money. …” Wilson said she assumes the city won’t reimburse the CAPC any of the money spent on utilities or maintenance over the years, but questioned an amount of $44,000 a year that the commission is paying the city for a loan to help with renovations to the The Aud a few years ago.
“Will this $44,000 go away? Will we get a credit? Because I’m going to assume they don’t have the money to reimburse the CAPC nor will they want to,” Wilson said of the city.
Holifield responded: “And that will be part of the meeting that Mike and I will have with Butch and [city finance director] Michael Akins.”
“I appreciate that,” Wilson said. “I just think that it’s also important that we keep the public updated. I feel that this body has done a lot to try to remain transparent and to build bridges with our community, and I just would like to make sure that the outcome of that meeting is reported in an appropriate manner.”
Until more answers are known, the CAPC has to proceed as if things are staying as they have been when it comes to expenses with The Aud, commissioner Robert Schmid said.
“We kind of have to go for the worst scenario,” he said. “Right now we can’t take all those expenses out of our budget. That would be foolish to do that because we don’t know how the conversation with the city will end up.”
Maloney told commissioners that in their spare time they could go through YouTube videos of CAPC and city council meetings from 2021 and 2022 to see if they could find any mention of a new agreement with the city.
“Now, there’s no transcript, so you can’t just breeze through it and look, but if you’re really interested in trying to find where a solution may lie, you may find it in those,” Maloney said. “Now, I’ve gone through hours of these things. I have found one snippet thus far, and what I’m hearing, I don’t know where this conclusion even started going back several months. It needs to go back into 2022 because there was something done at either the CAPC level and or the city level, but there had to be an agreement at some point because all of a sudden the CAPC didn’t just decide to just voluntarily start paying the utility bills.
“… You could ask some of the people that have been around for a while what those agreements were that sat on the commission and the council at those times, because these are all public records as well. One of the issues right now is we’re having trouble finding these records.”
Ty Reed, commission finance director, said records indicate the CAPC began paying all utilities at The Aud in January 2022.
In addition, in an October 2021 meeting of the CAPC, Carter indicated that all staff would move their offices into The Aud by December 2021 joining two staff members who were already there.
Even if a signed agreement can’t be found, any vote that happened at a meeting would be recorded in minutes and official, Maloney added.
“Since the CAPC started paying the utility bills in January 2022, then it’s late 2021 likely that city council and CAPC would have taken a vote to make up a new agreement,” Wilson said. “So, wouldn’t there be something in the minutes? Not just having to go through YouTube videos? Wouldn’t those votes be in the minutes? So, maybe we can pull some minutes. … Bottom line, I am aware that something probably existed, but we cannot operate on probably. The city has said that the 2018 agreement that went into place January 1, 2019, is the last thing they have on file known to them. Until we find something that replaces that, we should be operating under that agreement and we are not.”
Holifield agreed that when the offices relocated is likely when a new agreement went into place.
“I’m no detective, but I think when the CAPC moved back into this building, I think that’s when it all changed and the CAPC started paying …,” Holifield said. “I think some agreement was made for the use of the offices.”
If so, Wilson asked, where is that agreement?
“It’s curious why the city wouldn’t have that agreement on file,” she said. “For two bodies, it is understandable with a move one may have been misplaced, but for the CAPC and the city, neither body to have a record, that’s very curious.”
Holifield said he was also going to try to reach out to Carter.
“He would likely be a person [that would know],” Maloney said.
There are two options the commission could take if nothing is resolved with the city.
“We can look back, try to resolve a problem we don’t know how to resolve at this point, and the other thing is looking forward,” Schmid said. “The best-case scenario for me would be finishing the year the way it is and for 2026 have a new agreement with the city and solve the problem, even go back to the agreement from 2019 if that’s the situation and say, ‘OK, from January 2026, for January 1st, we’re going back to that agreement, or a new agreement which is newly signed and updated to the current situation, and then we’ll keep continuing.
“I’ve said it for so many times … why is the CAPC paying for this old building alone? Just because we are a cash cow, because we’re the only commission in town which has no financial problems, really, the only one who sits on a lot of money? But, that money is allocated for other things and not really for renovations of an old building or maintaining an old building. …” Paying for years of utilities when it wasn’t their responsibility is a misuse of public money, Wilson said.
“The issue that I have is those bills were paid with taxpayer dollars from our visitors and our locals, and that is not our money, it is their money and if that money was not supposed to be used to pay utilities, and the city were supposed to being paying them according to something that the city has on file,” Wilson said. “To me, that’s a mismanagement of funds. And Ty, you’re the finance director, you’re the accountant, but if there’s an agreement in place that we should not have paid something with tax dollars and we paid it, I do not feel good about that.”
