BY STACIE LETT CAIN
The Statesville City Council is considering a plan to reorganize the Downtown Statesville Development Corporation (DSDC).
Charged with fulfilling the program requirements for the North Carolina Main Street Program, the nonprofit DSDC receives a significant amount of its funding from the city, which allocates a special tax levied in the downtown tax district to the organization.
DSDC has been without an executive director since May of this year. During this transitional period, the DSDC Board of Directors approached the city officials with ideas about the organization can better serve the City of Statesville.
The DSDC board has asked the City Council to entertain a quasi-governmental model for the nonprofit. Under one proposal, DSDC would continue to operate under a contract with the city, but the two DSDC staff members would become city employees.
The reorganization would cost the city $200,000 a year. In the first year of the agreement, the city would recoup that amount from Main Street Development (MSD) revenues, as well as special appropriations. In subsequent years, funds from grants, marketing or revolving loan funds could be used to cover the cost.
The DSDC, which operates as a franchise of the Main Street America program of the National Trust for Historic Preservation, has been in existence since 1980. The program uses community driven revitalization to spur economic growth and development using economic vitality, design, organization and promotion as its four key components.
Moving toward a quasi-governmental model is a new trend and has been adopted in nearby communities, including Concord, Mocksville, North Wilkesboro and Salisbury.
Council members did not make a decision, and the knowledge that nearby municipalities had adopted the quasi-governmental structure didn’t appear to sway them.
“A concern for me is that these dollars would be better spent on economic development citywide, not focused on just downtown,” Council member Kim Wasson commented. “They (DSDC) have done well on their own, and the city doesn’t support any other nonprofits in this way.
To me this, sets an awkward precedent,” she added.
In addition to economic concerns, there was also a discussion about whether it would be necessary to increase the property tax rate to cover the needed funds.
Paying that tax was less of a problem to Council member Lisa Pearson than the fact that her ward would not benefit from those funds.
“If we are in an area that is going to be looked to pay this additional tax, we should be an area that would see a benefit from that,” she explained. “You can look down the street here and see that any improvements end here on Center Street at the ABC Store, and you can see what it looks like past that.
“Yet that tax would be paid by people beyond that border, and my concern is that they aren’t going to be seeing anything for it.”
Council members plan to continue discussing the plan at an upcoming workshop meeting.