Mo Money, Mo Meetings

Mo Money, Mo Meetings

OTB meeting this week to discuss spending of reserve fund. 

All are welcome to join in the discussion on Wednesday, June 6th at 4pm at the Community Center. The Ocracoke Occupancy Tax Board (Bob Chestnut - chair, Trudy Austin, Byron Miller, Stephanie O'Neal, and Nancy Leach) will meet with the community to decide how to go about the process of divvying up the reserve fund of about $400,000. 

In other words, the OTB isn't ready for your pitch or proposal; this meeting will determine the parameters of how and when and where local non-profits can ask for money. 

If you can't or won't attend the community meeting, Bob welcomes email suggestions and comments to bob@surfocracoke.com

To jog your memory, here's an excerpt from the Current's April 11, 2018 article about Occupancy Tax: "According to Hyde County finance officer Corrinne Gibbs, the Ocracoke Occupancy Tax fund balance is $736,000 and will get even bigger before the end of the fiscal year on June 30th. Ideally, the OTB would keep about $350,000 in reserve for emergencies or catastrophes. At their regular monthly meeting on April 2nd, the Hyde County Board of Commissioners voted to ask the OTB to suggest ways to spend about $400,000 of that reserve on tourism-related expenditures. (That's in addition to the $448,000 the OTB was planning to spend!*) "It's not best practice to have such a big reserve," Corrinne told the OTB. "You're not in the business of making money.""

*They ended up having $503,000 to grant for 2018-19. To see the list of who got the dough, read this article from May 7, 2018.


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