County funding for the Colonnade will be phased out over the next two years.

Nearly 100 people lined the walls for the three-and-one-half hour meeting on Tuesday where the Catoosa County Board of Commissioners approved the resolution.

In a 4-1 vote, commissioners rejected Chairman Bill Clark’s proposal to do the same to the Catoosa County Learning Center.

After 11 people at the meeting spoke against the Colonnade cuts and one spoke in favor, Commissioners Clark, Bobby Winters and Dewayne Hill voted for a proposal that will gradually cut off funding by Dec. 2008.

The resolution begins by cutting the $105,000 budgeted for the Colonnade in half in the fiscal year that begins in Oct. 2007. The funding will be halved again the following budget year, but the facility will be funded only for the first three months of the year.

“To me, the two most controversial programs in Catoosa County are the Colonnade and the Learning Center,” Clark said. “These programs in my opinion should not be financed with tax dollars.”

Clark said he would propose giving the savings back to citizens by lowering taxes. Commissioners Jim Emberson and Ken Marks voted against cutting off Colonnade funding.

“This is an embarrassing situation,” Emberson said. “Furthermore, it’s disgraceful that these things are even on the agenda.”

While Clark said the Colonnade should become self-sufficient, Emberson said the civic center facility needn’t show a profit since it was offered as a service.

Several audience members spoke out of turn at the meeting and hurled insults at Clark.

As each person was allowed five minutes to address the commission from the microphone, those who favored funding said the facility was an asset to the community helping to create an atmosphere that is attractive to enticing industry, provides an avenue for high school students to be in theater performances that help them get college scholarships and offers arts and entertainment options that otherwise wouldn’t be locally available.

Destiny Stewart, a Catoosa County Teen Council member, said many of her high school friends benefit from using the Colonnade for band fundraisers and performances that help them qualify for scholarships.

“We need the Colonnade,” she said. “If you take away the Colonnade, you’re taking away more than just that.”

Former Commissioner Pat Page said the resolution was “a slap in the face to the prior board of commissioners” that voted to continue funding.

The county will continue to maintain the grounds on the facility after it cuts off funding for utilities, insurance and operational costs.

In a companion resolution, commissioners voted to rescind the rental agreement with the Catoosa County Chamber of Commerce and give the Catoosa County Foundation for the Performing Arts the option of re-negotiating the lease with them for office space in the Colonnade.


Learning Center victory
Seventeen people addressed the commission to ask that Learning Center funds not be cut.

Shirley Smith, executive director of the Learning Center, said The Catoosa Citizens for Literacy has paid for 140 students to take GED tests in the past year. The group is dedicated to providing adult education and operates on a $376,000 annual budget.

The county had proposed phasing out its funding of $101,000 a year. Winters proposed dropping the issue without even voting after listening to more than an hour of audience pleas against the proposal.

Emberson said he believed citizens needed to know where the other commissioners stood on the issue and requested a vote instead of tabling the issue.

Clark’s vote was the only one to cut the center. He said he supports the center’s mission but doesn’t believe in funding it through the tax system.

“It’s a matter of individual freedom versus government force,” he said. “We can’t be charitable with somebody else’s money.”

Several speakers said they didn’t mind giving their money – and many said the funding works out to about $2 a person for everyone in the county or 10 cents for every $1,000 of property taxes paid.

Past GED recipients wrote letters of support for the center while many former elected officials also supported county funding.

Smith said that while an individual’s success is far more important than financial aspects of teaching, statistics do show that a better educated workforce brings more money into the community.

The difference between the earnings of a high school dropout and a high school graduate is about $7,000, she said. She said studies show this represents $5,054,000 in additional earnings that GED recipients who were helped through the Learning Center theoretically make in additional taxable income.

After the meeting, Clark said he didn’t plan to bring the issue to the board again until they begin work on the next budget.

Commissioners discussed completely cutting funding to the Learning Center and Colonnade during budget talks for 2007 but ended up voting the proposal down.

At that time, Commissioner Ron Gracy was one of those who voted against cutting funding. He spoke avidly against the proposals this evening.

Hill took his seat at the beginning of the year.