Recent past due collections received by the Eureka Springs City Advertising and Promotion Commission have earnings for 2024 surpassing 2023.
That’s what commissioners learned from finance director Ty Reed at the commission’s regular monthly meeting held Wednesday, March 26, at The Auditorium.
“If you notice, we did do some past collections for 2024,” Reed said during his financial report. “So, we’re now above, officially above 2023.”
Commissioner Heather Wilson responded, with a chuckle: “Can you repeat that please?” emphasizing reaching the goal.
As of the March 26 meeting, the CAPC had collected $1,979,585 for 2024 compared with $1,974,947 brought in for 2023. There are still some outstanding past due collections for 2024, Reed said, adding that payment plans have been set up for some of those businesses.
“I’ve been working with, there’s several collectors that are past due quite a few months, and I’ve worked out payment plans with them,” Reed said. “So, we don’t get that money right away, but they are paying on it. And right now, we’re about, for last year, we’re collecting about $40,000 more that’s past due.”
That led to a discussion about businesses that are frequently past due with their tourism taxes.
“I just have one one thing to say,” commissioner David Avanzino said. “I’m looking at the past-due businesses and quite frankly I’m a little upset that we’re putting out all this advertising bringing people to the city and they’re not submitting their taxes and they are getting the absolute benefit.”
Reed said he agreed and it has taken some time to get control of the situation.
“It was chaos last year, and so I’m finally getting a hand on it,” Reed said. “…. Now, I send a past due statement every month and I’ve been in contact with the people that are past due. We’re working on getting that caught up and we’re going to keep it caught up from here on out.”
Avanzino asked how many months a business has to be past due before the CAPC takes the next step in enforcing the remittance laws.
“We haven’t had to do that yet,” Reed said of elevating the situation. “People have been very good about communicating with me. We haven’t come to that hurdle yet.”
Commissioner Robert Schmid said businesses need to understand that licenses could be in jeopardy if the taxes aren’t paid in timely fashion.
“Businesses need to be aware if they’re way behind and if you have a business which refuses to contact you, just go there and you pull the license, and they’re done until they catch up,” Schmid said. “I remember from past times that you would give three months’ time. And if there’s more than three months and there’s no payment plan, there’s nothing worked out, then you just pull the licenses. That usually gets them very quickly.”
The money collected isn’t the businesses’ in the first place, Schmid reminded his fellow commissioners.
“People always say, ‘I’m the taxpayer’,” he said. “No, you’re the tax collector. It’s not your money. You just collect it and you have to give it to the parties involved, like the city, the state, CAPC. You can’t just put it in your pocket and use it for something else.
“I’ve seen it in the past and that’s just a misconception from some business owners.”
Wilson agreed.
“It’s strong language, but essentially, it’s stealing,” she said. “I know that it’s easier to catch flies with honey, but there is a certain point where we have to draw the line.”
Avanzino responded: “To me, anything over three months, we need to pull their license. Whether it’s for 30 days, I believe that’s in our bylaws, right? Or in the state law, actually.”
CAPC director Mike Maloney said the organization is taking the proper steps and outlined various ways the law could be enforced more firmly.
“There’s two things,” he said. “Number one, anybody that is holding an ABC license will lose that license and that will shut them down immediately. We do have that privilege, if you want to call it that. We used that a couple of times just because it was necessary to do that, and what we found is it was very effective.
“With these other people, however, digging down deep, deep, deep into the system and finding out for instance as you’ve seen the list, some people just literally fell off the face of the earth. We’ve got to go back to those people and do the demand letters and that’s what Ty’s doing right now on a monthly basis with just reminders. The second part of that is to go and follow up with certified letters … And then what we have done with one of our lodging properties recently was we did a process server, which came in and gave them that information. They weren’t happy about it, but that’s the way it goes.
“So we’re taking that extreme step, too, when we’ve got to finally go ahead and demand payment on these things. At that point, according to our bylaws, if we don’t get payment, then we can go ahead and subpoena them, and we’ll take it to the prosecutor in Carroll County, and then that’s when the legal prosecution takes place at that point. Pull the license, pull anything that they have, so they can shut them down.”
Avanzino asked: “But are we doing that?”
“We haven’t done it yet. We haven’t done it in a while. No, sir,” Maloney responded. “But we have that privilege to do that and I think what we’re doing with this payment plan right now, trying to go and get those monies in to us, we’re giving them the option of either paying us over a period of time or if they don’t pay, then we will go ahead and take the next step and that will be engaging the prosecuting attorney.”
CURRENT FINANCIALS Reed reported that the CAPC had $1,806,982.94 in the bank as of Feb. 28.
“February collections were $90,789.70, with a budget of $90,000,” he said. “Year-to-date collections $201,000, with a budget of 198,000. Total income for February was $102,530 with a budget of $106,000. Year-to-date total income was $225,633 with a budget of $229,500.”
TOURISM REPORT
Maloney reported that the annual St. Patrick’s Day parade had overflowing crowds and showed a video to commissioners on progress of the new facility at the Opera of the Ozarks, which he said is scheduled to open in late May.
Visiteurekasprings. com, the CAPC’s website, is seeing 400 percent more views in 2025 compared with 2024, Maloney said, adding that the Little Rock/Pine Bluff areas and Kansas City continue to be top site visitors.
A near-sellout crowd of 950 recently attended the Robert Earl Keen concert at The Auditorium, commissioners were told.
“That was a Thursday night show,” Maloney said. “That helped us prove one important thing: It’s the name that sells the show. And the name will sell the show. If we have another Thursday night like that again, the retailers will be happy because we got reports the next day saying: ‘Wow, all these people came in from out of town. They stayed, they shopped, we love this.’
“The odd thing about that show was that our staff, ushers and so forth, we didn’t recognize that many people who were locals. We saw them, obviously, but we didn’t see that many. It was a lot of people who came from out of town.”
Maloney added that Ricky Skaggs will be performing at The Aud on Saturday, April 5, the CAPC will host a hospitality training on Monday and Tuesday, April 7 and 8, and the inaugural Eureka Springs Music Awards will be held Sunday, April 13.
MARKETING SUPPORT REQUESTS The commission unanimously approved two marketing support requests.
The Eureka Springs Blues Party was OK’d to receive $5,000 and will be held May 29 through June 1. The festival will include events at Basin Park Hotel, Basin Spring Park, upstairs at Grotto and at Chelsea’s.
The commission also approved $2,500 for Blues Weekend Center Street Block Party, a fundraiser for the Eureka Springs Community Center.
