A&P approves request

The Conway Advertising and Promotions Commission approved several funding requests for the remainder of 2006 made decisions at its meeting Tuesday.

At its recent retreat, the A&P Commission decided a total of $30,000 would be allocated for the remaining 2006 funding requests.

The group voted 5-0 to grant the following requests: $1,000 for the Conway Kids' Triathlon, $10,000 for the Quality of Life Council for a holiday lights festival, $1,000 for the Community Development Institute annual meeting, $1,500 for the League of United Latin American Citizens for "El Grito" and $5,000 for the Agora Conference Center for statewide meetings.

The A&P also granted three requests from the Conway Area Chamber of Commerce, including $3,500 for Conway tourism branding, $5,000 for a chamber tourism brochure and $3,000 for Christmas snowflakes.

The commission began making decisions by first eliminating several items they felt could either be held off another year or did not necessarily need their funding.

One item the group planned to consider for Tuesday's meeting concerned a phone line for Conway tourism. The A&P discussed, at one point, CPA Barbara Money housing the phone at her office.

"I think that is a function the chamber of commerce could better serve," Commission member Andy Hawkins said. "We need to come to a point where we say the phone line is worth a certain amount of money."

The group voted 5-0 to spend $2,000 to have the chamber answer the phone and provide the staff to do so.

The commission took action on another timely agenda item - mailing labels that needed to go out very soon.

"Those started in March," Conway Area Chamber of Commerce CEO Jan Spann said. "The reason they were taken from us was so they could get out quickly and we'd like to take those back and get those out."

The commission eventually voted 5-0 to allocate up to $17,500 for this mailing project. This total was decided upon based on the charge per copy, the postage and the labor charge for this 14-piece mail-out.

"I say we need to approve this yesterday," Commission member Shelia Whitmore said.

Lisa Stephens, Conway CPA, gave a presentation of an audit recently done on the commission's funds from last year.

"Everything went well with the checking of the numbers and the auditing of the numbers," Stephens said. "But just when you think everything is going so smooth, here comes this new tax."

Stephens said the main problem with the A&P's new tax on prepared food is no clear-cut way of determining who should pay the tax.

"By next year some procedures can and should be in place," Stephens said.

However, she added the money is being accounted for properly. According to Money, the prepared food tax brought in $174,284 for the month of May and $959,504 since last December.

However, Money mentioned a few business have not paid any of their prepared food taxes. She added she has a meeting set up with City Attorney Mike Murphy on how best to handle that situation.

Commission members Peter Patel and Greg Lock were absent from this meeting. The next regularly scheduled meeting of the A&P Commission will be held July 11, because of the Independence Day holiday.

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(Staff Writer Jessica Montgomery can be reached by e-mail at jessica.montgomery@thecabin.net or by phone at 505-1236.)