DID waits for spending clarification

The Downtown Improvement District’s ongoing budgetary constraints have a new wrinkle, as the group is still unclear as to its spending authority following complaints last month.

City Attorney Robert Fournier planned to address those complaints, generated by legal consultant Michael Barfield, this week. Barfield — driven by an ongoing spat with DID board member and downtown merchant Ron Soto — questioned whether the group had the power to give grants to fund projects organized by outside organizations, as it has several times over the past year.

City staff appeared at Tuesday’s DID meeting to clarify the city’s procurement process for purchases, but the grant question remained unanswered. Purchasing Manager Mary Tucker said that, from her department’s point of view, the board was in the clear.

“It’s been an unwritten policy that you’ve been doing this,” Tucker said. “There’s nothing on the procurement side you’ve violated.”

The grants question, then, is a matter of policy. In a meeting with city staff, Fournier said he would take the matter before the City Commission in January to determine the DID’s powers.

The board has spent tens of thousands of dollars on grants to organizations such as the Sarasota Downtown Merchants Association and the Downtown Marketing Co-op, funding downtown lighting and advertising in the process. DID Chairman Mark Kauffman said the spending was in keeping with the board’s mission, and that any potential misstep was unintentional.

“We give a donation to the police force to enhance their volunteer ambassador program,” Kauffman said. “We give a donation to the Downtown Sarasota Alliance, to the farmers market. These are all things that enhance the downtown, and we feel we should participate in it.”

As it awaits clarification on the grants, the DID is also planning for its future. DID Operations Manager John Moran outlined the potential for the group’s oft-lamented budget to dwindle even further.

A project to install flowers throughout the downtown area, which the board has been working toward for months, could cost up to $100,000, he said. A project that large — in addition to $137,000 annual payments toward 2013 Main Street improvements — could drain its reserves.

“If you have no carryover (into next year’s budget) because we spend it all, your available discretionary funding for future years is a pretty small amount,” Moran said.

More precisely, the available funding would be somewhere around $46,000, Moran said. Although some money could be freed up by ending ongoing grant payments, Moran said the only way to achieve any significant change would be to expand the boundaries of the DID, which generates money via a property tax on commercial property owners within a set area.

The group is awaiting additional pricing information before moving forward with the project to install flowers on streets within the DID, but the board’s ability to spend will ultimately have an impact on the scope of any project.

“This is a major project, and this can assimilate all of our extra money,” Kauffman said. “We really have to go over the budget to see what we’re going to be able to afford here.”