With little public discussion, the Eureka Springs City Advertising and Promotion Commission unanimously approved the appointment of Mike Maloney as the CAPC’s permanent executive director at its regular monthly meeting on Wednesday, April 24.
Commissioners went into an eight-minute executive session near the end of the April 24 meeting. When they returned, commissioner Kolin Paulk made a motion to hire Maloney on a permanent basis “upon mutual agreement to contract for $90,000, plus any difference in Social Security pay.”
Commissioner Bradley Tate-Greene seconded Paulk’s motion and the commission voted 5-0 to approve the selection. Brian Weinmann was the only commissioner not present at the meeting and David Avanzino voluntarily recused himself from both deliberations and the vote because Maloney rents a property from him.
Maloney, who served as the CAPC’s executive director from 2011 to 2019, returned on an interim basis last fall.
“I’d like to thank the commissioners this evening for really due diligence in this process,” Maloney said after the vote. “I know it’s not easy to do these things because this is a fairly demanding position.
“But, as I said earlier in our session, my efforts are fully engaged in making this a successful city and doing what we can do to raise the bar of tourism as high as we possibly can. We’ve got a great team to do it with and I’m very pleased with all of you guys as commissioners in the ability to be able to do that. So, thank you very much.”
Maloney met with commissioners in executive session during the March 27 CAPC meeting for a job performance evaluation.
“That’s why I came here,” Maloney told the Times-Echo in late 2023 about his intentions to become the permanent director. “I’m looking forward to the challenge.” Commissioners appointed Maloney as the interim director in late October after the resignation of former director Scott Bardin.
“If you drove around in 2019 and took a look at the buildings and signs and then drove around today you’d see new signs … lots of new restaurants and shops, people and faces,” Maloney said in December. “The composition of the city has changed a bit, all for the better. I think one thing for me, what’s changed within the CAPC is the ways that we are able to work with our stakeholders, the tax collectors, in terms of how we communicate with them.
“… I think another thing that is tremendous for us today is that we have seven commissioners on board. We did not have seven when I got here, we had four, and we built that up in a very short period of time. It’s a tremendous, tremendous commission. These are great people … they’re enthusiastic, they have wisdom and I think a really great direction they want the city to go into with its advertising, marketing and promotions.
The other two candidates who were considered finalists were Susan Luddy and John Pricher. It wasn’t indicated if or when either Luddy or Pricher were interviewed, but commissioner Steve Holifield, also a city council member, indicated at the April 22 council meeting that a special CAPC meeting originally scheduled for April 10 was canceled because of the interview process not being complete at the time.
Luddy and Pricher were two candidates vetted and recommended by Staffmark, which was hired to assist in the search process. If the CAPC selected a candidate recommend by the agency, it would have paid a fee of 12 percent of the position’s salary to the company.
OTHER CAPC BUSINESS
Bardin, now the CAPC’s finance director, told commissioners in his monthly report that the CAPC cash balance as of March 31 was $1,966,828.34.
“Based on my memory, that’s about $20,000 higher than last month,” Bardin said.
In tourism tax collections for March, the CAPC collected $82,182 for food and beverage, 43 percent more than the $57,530 budget. In lodging, $74,880 was brought in, 59 percent more than the $47,071 projected. Overall for March, collections were at $157,062 which was 50 percent more than $104,601 budgeted.
“If you look at our January through March total collections, we’ve collected $344,921 and our budget for those three months was $363,224,” Bardin said. “That’s a 5 percent decrease, or we’re short about $18,302.”
The first three months, however, CAPC collected 2 percent more ($82,182) in food and beverage than the same period in 2023 ($80,843). For lodging from January through March in 2024, the CAPC took in $74,880 compared with $77,267 during the first three months of 2023.
In his director’s report, Maloney reported a positive response from the community to an April 11 filming at Sweet Spring Park of a Eureka Springs food and landscape commercial.
“The film is now in post-production and we’re going to go ahead and schedule a date for a VIP kind of party on June 2, a Sunday, here at The Auditorium,” Maloney said. “We’ll be sending out some public invitations for people to come and preview the film.”
Another “58 minute breakfast” recently took place at Mud Street Cafe where CAPC staff meet with stakeholders in the community. Each morning session held is recorded and will soon be posted on the CAPC website, Maloney said.
“These are pretty good conversations, and we always get out within 58 minutes,” he said.
In a report from Madden Media, Maloney told commissioners that the quarterly digital performance showed 3.5 million impressions and nearly 50,000 brand engagements at visiteurekasprings.com “Our click through ratio is just phenomenal at 27.86 and the industry average … is 7.7 percent,” Maloney said. “So, we are way achieving over those.”
The top market for 2024 continues to be the Little Rock/Pine Bluff area with Tulsa, Kansas City, Springfield, Oklahoma City, Dallas and Fayetteville/Fort Smith following, Maloney reported.
In a media performance report, Maloney said the Facebook “reach” was up 22.4 percent with 639 new followers and 320 new followers on Instagram.
A new music series, “Party in the Park,” will start this summer and will be held the third Saturday in June, July and August at Basin Spring Park, Maloney said. The series will feature bands that provide “some good energy.”
“We also have things basically every Saturday going on all the way through the end of September,” he added. “… It’s going to be a lot of fun and I’m really excited about our Basin Park music series.”
The commission also heard about an email from resident James Fliss regarding The Auditorium not being ADA-compliant.
Maloney said Mayor Butch Berry and an ADA compliance officer from Little Rock recently looked over the facility.
“The mayor brought in one of the experts of ADA from Little Rock and we went upstairs and we took a look at the floor of The Auditorium and it was determined that there is no ADA compliance necessary for a historical building,” Maloney told commissioners. “The age of the Eureka Springs Auditorium is 94 years old.
“So, Mr. Fliss is not correct in his assumption that we are not ADA-compliant. He felt as if the rake of the floor at the Aud was improper for wheelchairs….”
Maloney said he also reminded Fliss that the CAPC is just “the keepers” of the facility, which is owned by the city.
“ADA compliance is handled through the city in all aspects,” Maloney said. “… We did take a very hard look at the rake of this floor. … There is really technically no way that you’re going to level this floor all the way to the stage. But, inasmuch as the compliance factor, there is no statute that suggests that we would be in noncompliance because it doesn’t show up in a historical building as such.”
Holifield responded: “So, this building is exempt due to the age of it.”
“Yes,” Maloney replied.
“Unless we did some major modifications,” Holifield said.
“The modifications would be extreme,” Maloney responded.
FUNDING REQUESTS
Commissioners approved three $5,000 funding requests.
Approvals included a request from the Eureka Springs Historical Museum for its annual “Voices from Eureka’s Silent City” cemetery tours fundraiser over two weekends in October.
Also approved was an inaugural “Dogs Days of Summer” music festival that is scheduled to be held from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. on Saturday, July 20, and a fundraiser for Good Shepherd Humane Society.
The event will be a “concert full day with dogs,” including bands and vendors from cities all over the region.
The final event approved was the successful annual Christmas Tour of Homes, which is organized by the Eureka Springs Preservation Society. This year’s event, which will be held Saturday, Dec. 7, is the 44th annual and attracts approximately 900 visitors, preservation society president Dee Bright told commissioners.
