By Paul Tambasco
City Editor
Town Hall is trying to stay a step ahead of Garner’s organized running races.
In anticipation of more events, the Town Council unanimously approved a new special events support policy on Monday, March 16. A group of town department heads created the new rules in order to handle requests for races and other special events that require taxpayer-provided services.
“This is a realization that there is a cost to providing these events. …It allows us to make some rational decisions about what we should pay as a town and what private event organizers should pay and whether there should be some cost-sharing arrangement,” Garner Police Chief Tom Moss said.
Until now, determining the extent of town support for special events has been mostly an informal process.
“[Previously] it was done on an ad-hoc basis,” Town Manager Hardin Watkins said. With more demand, the town needs to become more efficient in how it evaluates requests, he said.
The new rules define the monetary cost of supplying the police and public works service that is required to help events run smoothly. It costs the town $36 an hour to supply a police officer at an event and $18 an hour to provide a cruiser.
“If you have a large 10K race, it could very well take 15 to 20 police officers to cover that. …You can’t just pull that together at the last moment,” Moss said.
In writing the policy, Moss researched those of other municipalities – including Raleigh, which holds 53 road races a year.
“We may never reach that, but we went from zero to two and now three this year.”
Prior arrangements exempt
But a few at Town Hall are concerned the policy may treat some community groups unfairly.
Mayor Ronnie Williams is bothered by a section of the policy that exempts some groups from undergoing the new application process.
Dubbed “community programming partners,” these groups have an existing “contractual agreement and budgeted arrangement” to hold special events, according to the policy.
“It is going to get real fuzzy when we determine who will be grandfathered and who will not,” Williams said.
The policy includes a formula for determining the cost of police and town services based on the size of the event and the facilities used – unless a group has a contract with the town.
“The policy is not going to apply to them if [those services] are part of a contract,” Moss said. “If they have an arrangement on the cost of that facility or what they pay for its use then there is no need to apply this policy to them because we’ve already covered everything related to that in their contract.”
Williams doubts that will sit well with groups who don’t have prior agreements; he thinks it is unfair.
“If one group can partner with the town, it is the town’s obligation to partner with everybody,” Williams said.
As of press time, town officials could not provide complete information on the number of agencies and groups considered community programming partners under the new policy. Staff is compiling the list of exempted groups for the Council to review before the policy goes into effect July 1.
The Town Council unanimously approved the policy, though it had not been shown to any outside organizations.
“When they see it, I have a suspicion that people will have questions about equal treatment,” said Williams, who does not vote.
Watkins denied that the policy is an example of grandfathering – a term he says has negative connotations.
Groups will be exempt from the policy only as long as they continue providing the programs they’ve offered in the past, he said.
“As long as you’re in your current line of business, you’re exempt. If you step outside that, you may not be.”
