SPRUCE PINE — The Mitchell County Visitor Center won’t receive county funding this fiscal year, a pair of Mitchell County Commissioners confirmed Tuesday, June 29 during a meeting of the Mitchell County Chamber of Commerce Board of Directors.
During the meeting, Chamber Executive Director Patti Jensen and Commissioners Jeff Harding and Steve Pitman all spoke on the matter. Harding and Pitman reiterated that the decision is not meant with ill will, rather that funding is just needed elsewhere.
“The board expressed when they first heard of the Visitors Center not being funded, that there were a lot of misunderstandings that may have influenced that decision,” Jensen said. “We have never been asked for a Visitor Center budget. I know that sounds crazy, but throughout the decades it’s been funded by the county and they have never asked for a budget, not that we wouldn’t have given it gladly.”
Jensen said there are paper copies of financial statements and reports to solidify budget decisions.
“Every check that is written has an invoice stapled to it for what it was for,” Jensen said.
Visitor Center funding is not in the county’s next fiscal year budget and Pitman said that the budget needed to be adopted before the quickly approaching annual deadline.
Harding added that not funding the Visitor Center this year was never meant to be negative or hurt the county.
Jensen commented that county funding should be prioritized toward an advertisement for the area with the goal of getting tourists to the Visitor Center and further providing them with local ads, restaurants and other information about businesses and attractions in the area.
“We are going to be talking to our accountant about the best way to do that so we can have classes for the visitor center and for occupancy tax so we can get specific reports pulled out of our data,” Jensen said.