St. Charles looks at downtown group's value

For $240,000 in local taxes, the Downtown St. Charles Partnership acts as the marketing agency for the epicenter of business in St. Charles. On Tuesday, the city council's Government Operations Committee decided to figure out what the partnership does with that money and if it should continue receiving it.

Council members grilled Jennifer Faivre, the partnership's executive director, to establish what a fair measure of marketing success or failure should be. The questions could be the first of many for local organizations that receive tax dollars as the city continues to try to stretch dollars during the tight economy.

Faivre told the committee the partnership measures success in the number of volunteers who work with the organization and time spent trying to bring new businesses in and prevent existing businesses from leaving.

Ward 2 Alderman Cliff Carrignan told Faivre he wants to see more business recruitment and more sales tax dollars.

"Everything else becomes a subset of that," Carrignan said. "For the city, it should be about two things: storefronts and the taxes. We can find somebody else to market the city, maybe at a better price, a better return."

Once the stakes were laid out in those terms, Ward 5 Alderman David Richards rose to Faivre's defense. Richards is a former director of the partnership.

"They alone cannot fill storefronts," Richards said. "It takes the cooperation of the economic development department of the city and the property owners. The partnership, or any other organization, is not in a position to put the hammer down on (inactive property owners)."

Carrignan said he's open to suggestions about performance measurement but stuck to his guns that sales taxes flowing into city coffers is a fair measuring stick.

"I don't believe volunteerism and all that is a city problem," Carrignan said. "That's a partnership problem."

Faivre said getting local businesses and community organizations to work together has been a problem. The city recently called a meeting of all the executive directors of all local organizations. Faivre was the only one who showed up.

"Everybody else said they were too busy to come," Faivre said.

The committee ultimately approved the $240,000 funding for the partnership with the understanding that a true measure of the partnership's success will be agreed upon at some point.

Partnership: St. Charles approves funding with strings attached