The town board at its meeting Thursday debated the logistics of a lease for the Chamber of Commerce building on Main Street and talked about possibly building a new website to keep it up to date with the times and make it more efficient.
They also talked about the upcoming 150th anniversary of town and heard an unfortunate update regarding the closure of NC106 leading into town from Georgia.
“We’re still open for business in that critical leaf season time, but that 106 is a problem for many people, and maybe we can get the word out that there are alternative ways of getting here,” Mayor Pat Taylor said.
Chamber lease
The evening’s longest discussion centered around the idea of charging the Chamber of Commerce rent on their building at 108 Main Street, which has been an ongoing topic for several years.
Initially, there was another plan for the Chamber to pay to help upkeep the town’s public bathrooms, but that didn’t pan out – Kaye McHan, Executive Director with the Chamber, said they’d been told by the county attorney that they couldn’t use tourism dollars for that.
Because of that, Mayor Patrick Taylor said they’d gone back to the original idea of charging the Chamber rent for their building following the expiration of a previous lease years ago.
McHan and the commissioners disagreed on the proposal. McHan said the Chamber could not afford a proposed rent of $40,000 a year, citing a number of expenses they had like paying their employees and office overhead.
“We’ll have to move out,” she said.
She said there were numerous other things the Chamber did in the area which made up for not paying a yearly lease, including renovating the Dog Park and hanging up Christmas lights in town when that season comes around.
“We are still maintaining your building,” she said. “We support the town in multiple ways. You’re getting the money, just not through a lease.”
Commissioner Amy Patterson said it was unclear what expenses the Chamber had that made it so they couldn’t afford the proposed rent. Taylor said he wanted to make sure everyone had a “full airing of what kind of money we’re talking about, whose spending it and how this comes about.”
“I was the chair of the Chamber when the building was acquired,” said Commissioner Brian Stiehler. “The intent was not an income maker. It was solely to go to the Chamber. That building was meant to be what it was.”
Commissioner John Dotson said the building already was a town building “whether we want it or not” and said there was value to owning the building. He said they should talk with the county about the options, as there was some uncertainty about the rules surrounding tourism and bed tax revenues and what the money could be used for.
“I’d like to see us make good and valuable use of the building, if possible, certainly for the Chamber. But as far as the building is concerned … I think it needs to be considered for a lease,” he said.
McHan also pushed back against a suggestion to save money by not advertising as much: “We hardly do any now. It’s not like we’re doing millions in magazines. Most everything goes back into the town.”
No decision was made as of Thursday’s meeting, but they got town attorney Bob Hagemann to agree to talk with the county attorney about the issue before deciding on a course of action.
Anniversary
McHan also spoke on the upcoming 150th anniversary of town coming in 2025. She requested permission to put up a small sign on the entry to town advertising the anniversary alongside the town’s regular signs, and also asked to put up banners around Main Street.
Both of those requests were approved unanimously by the board.
McHan described an extravagant run of celebrations for the anniversary taking place next year. She said there would be a poster art contest with The Bascom facilitating, a compilation of videos featuring the town over the years, Historical Society walking tours specifically tailored to the anniversary, and an expanded Jamboree event downtown where they would “pull out all the stops.”
“It’s a party for the whole year,” she said. “We’ve been here a long time.”
A new website
Taylor said he’d gotten feedback that the town website was out of date and could use a revamp. This was a contrast with the website he’d been using to update people during the response to Hurricane Helene, AskMayorPat.com. Through updating that site quickly with short videos full of information, he said he saw how out of date the town’s website is in comparison.
He added that a representative with Gov. Roy Cooper’s office had called and complimented him since Cooper had been watching the videos to get informed on some of what was happening with the response to Hurricane Helene in late September and earlier this month.
“This is kind of a model on how communities can communicate,” Taylor said. “We can provide deep access to information, and have a system where we can communicate. It’s time to re-evaluate what we’re doing on our website.”
Commissioner Jeff Weller said he thought there was a need for a “completely new website, from the ground up.”
Dotson said it would likely not be a very long process to make one since everything is made from a template these days. He added that the current site is “redundant” and that it wasn’t helpful to send people to a whole different site for the Mayor’s updates. He pointed to other websites from local municipalities he’d sent to the board members as correct ways to do it.
“When you go to [those sites], it’s easy to determine where to go, instead of a lot of drop-down menus, then you get to the bottom, and there’s another list down there,” he said.
Dotson spoke about finding someone local to do it and Patterson said they should make sure a new site was easy to update in the future. Stiehler said they should make sure there are multiple people with knowledge of the site in case “someone’s on vacation and you need to change it.”
The board voted unanimously to appoint Town Manager Josh Ward to look into how to build a new town website.