A referendum seeking to expand uses for the three-quarter-percent sales tax dedicated to Grand Forks' Alerus Center is one of the recommendations coming out of a task force looking into ways to fix the city-owned events center.
Two task force members, one a private citizen and one a City Council member, made the proposal Thursday.
The former, Dwight Thompson, suggested the city look into amending its home rule charter to allow the expanded uses.
The latter, Council Vice President Eliot Glassheim, was more specific in seeking funding to attract new events and creating an endowment that would subsidize the building long after the sales tax expires in 2029.
Task force co-chairman Doug Christensen, a council member, said his understanding is the city attorney is ready to start drafting the referendum language.
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Currently, by city law, the Alerus Center may only use the tax for building improvements and debt payment, even though the tax produces more than enough money for those uses. A separate quarter-percent lodging tax subsidizes the building's operations but has proved too small.
As a result, when Alerus Center operations lose money, it's the city's economic development fund that comes to the rescue. Since the events center opened in 2001, it's consumed some $1.1 million in money usually reserved for helping businesses grow, beautifying the city and funding special events.
The task force agreed to Thompson's recommendation, leaving out the specifics of Glassheim's, and asked the council to look into the matter.
It also directed the Alerus Center to continue to aim for a break-even budget with just its lodging tax subsidy.
The building's already been doing that, but the goal has proven elusive both because of the economic downturn and because of a dearth of major concerts and concertgoers. For example, the last big concert, Britney Spears, lost the events center $97,000.
Thursday's meeting was the penultimate meeting for the 13-member task force, which has been laboring to come to a consensus on a set of recommendations for improving the Alerus Center. The building had come under fire for losing money and criticism that the commission overseeing it isn't transparent enough. City leaders feared it would lose credibility in the eyes of city residents, a dangerous thing for an $80 million public investment that operates largely as a business.
By and large, there was consensus on the task force, mostly among the majority of council members and all of the private citizens. The exception has been council member Terry Bjerke, a vocal critic of the Alerus Center.
At one point Thursday, several task force members tried to dissuade Bjerke of the notion that the events center was illegitimate even though a majority of voters approved its construction in 1996.
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Bjerke asked if 100 percent of the voters had approved -- it was actually 53 percent -- and if they would've done so knowing the building would cost so much more than projected and lose $500,000 a year.
"It's not $500,000; that's B.S.," task force member Bill Hutchison, a private citizen member, shot back. A lot of that money -- more than half, actually -- came from the lodging tax, he said, which voters chose to dedicate to the Alerus Center as a revenue source.
Laura Block, a private citizen member of the task force, said the argument is moot. The vote, she said, can't be undone.
"The Alerus Center is not going away," Christensen said. "It is a community asset. It's one of hell of a community asset." Like his mom used to tell him, he said, if you pick at a scab, it won't heal.
Reach Tran at (701) 780-1248; (800) 477-6572, ext. 248; or send e-mail to ttran@gfherald.com .
