Less than an hour before their long-awaited meeting with Escambia County Clerk Pam Childers, Visit Pensacola board members received notification that the Clerk’s office sent a check for $1,165,889.16 for two Visit Pensacola invoices.
- The check will allow Visit Pensacola to pay Showcase Pensacola for expenses from its September 2024 submission.
Visit Pensacola, the County’s Finance Department, and Escambia County Commissioner Chair Mike Kohler met with Childers to discuss the bureaucratic red tape that has withheld reimbursement and payment of millions of dollars of tourism advertising since Sept. 30, 2024. It remains unknown whether the meeting established firm rules for tourism marketing documentation. I hope to have more later today.
During a recent podcast interview, Tourist Development Council Chairman David Bear explained how bureaucratic gridlock has brought tourism promotion efforts to a virtual standstill. The crisis centers on the Clerk of Court’s administration of tourist development tax funds, with unpublished and constantly changing documentation requirements creating an impossible maze for tourism organizations.
- “She’s not publishing those rules. She’s just keeping those to herself,” Bear said.
Background: On May 16, Inweekly received, via a public record request, a spreadsheet from Escambia County of all the tourism-related invoices that County Clerk Pam Childers has refused to pay and has continually requested more and more documentation. The Showcase Pensacola total was $1.7 million.
Since we received the invoices, we have been told the clerk’s office cut a check in late May for $71,692.64 of an invoice totalling $540,901.87, and Visit Pensacola has submitted another set of invoices for more than $600K, so the total below is probably much higher.
- “We’re at a point where we’re limited on what we can reimburse Showcase,” Visit Pensacola CEO Schaefer told WEAR-TV. “As far as options go, the next option for us is to take out a line of credit. And we don’t wanna do that.”
- “I’m about half of what they owe,” said Dick Appleyard, managing partner of Showcase Pensacola.
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