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Alderman Daniel Berry brought forward a discussion-only item regarding a potential ordinance to build guidelines for allocation and use of city funds in the first April meeting.

“I put this on here for us to talk about and put some thoughts together before I go and draft an ordinance,” he said. “In any money we allocate, there’s no kind of strict guidelines. It’s not about being strict, it’s about making sure that our money, which is taxpayer money, is going where it needs to be.”

He said he wanted to have some guidelines in order to set expectations for the city and for those receiving allocated funds. He explained that he was specifically talking about funds allocated to non-profits, which comes from the general fund, and tourism dollars, and added that state legislators in both the house and the senate were discussing allocated funds.

“We’re private act, but we’ll still have to report to the comptroller to report the details annually,” said Berry.

He said according to the state, the board will have to start reporting where they spend hotel-motel tax dollars. He said he wanted to get the board’s thoughts and insights on further details from non-profits on how they use their funds from the city.

Alderman Kurt Glick said he agreed with Berry, and added that he studied the current budget and came up with some idea.

“My thoughts were to kind of divide it up (the budget) and operate it like a grant that the city provides to non-profits,” he said.

He said non-profit allocated funds could also be used for projects, and that the hotel-motel tax could be used for competitive grants for tourism-based projects.

Glick said they could set a maximum amount so they could have particular options if multiple people asked for the maximum amount of the grant.

City Finance Director Sue Wilson said “We want to look where we’ve been funding so far, to make sure we don’t do anything abrupt that would make it difficult for some of these agencies to change course from where they are now as to how you implement this.”

City Administrator Jason Quick said he liked Glick’s idea of the competitive grant process.

Mayor Ray Knowis said he wanted to point out that many of the non-profits the board would be hearing from might not have a grant writing staff, and he wanted to make sure that didn’t hinder them in the process.

Glick said he just wanted a detailed description of what the entity’s budget is and what their plans are for the use of the funds, and Knowis felt that was similar to what they were already doing. Glick said they would just be “formalizing” the process, and Berry agreed.

Berry added he is interested in investing the hotel-motel tax dollars to bring more revenue into the city by promoting multiple day events and other events that bring tourists in.

There was some further back and forth discussion before Knowis closed the discussion and adjourned the meeting.