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Love Civic Center, V&CC budgets in good shape
By Connie Beard
Published July 30, 2010
Budget talks, a new class for Leadership Lamar County and a special guest were among the items on the agenda for the Lamar County Chamber of Commerce board meeting earlier this week.
The various entities under the Lamar County Chamber of Commerce umbrella are in line to come in at their budgeted amounts for the 2009-2010 fiscal year, which ends Sept. 30.
The Paris Convention & Visitors Council has a budget of $496,000 with income to date of $359,692.
“We’re $100,000 away from meeting our budget, and we’re on line to meet it,” said Mindy Moree, chamber president, at a chamber board meeting this week.
Love Civic Center shows an income to date of $192,922, just under its projected budget of $206,847.
The July financials for both the council and the center will contain their portions of the quarterly hotel/motel taxes, which are expected to bring them within reach of the budgeted amounts.
The recent Tour de Paris brought in $26,000 in entry fees and miscellaneous income, which doesn’t cover all of the expenses involved in an event of this magnitude.
“Tour de Paris was a huge success, but it has significant expenses. We look at this event from tourism — it puts heads in beds and adds to the tax base. We’ll see those in the July financials,” Moree said,
“This is the best we’ve ever had. All in all that was one of the big deals we have in Paris. The number of people we had to volunteer was phenomenal,” said Bobby Walters, head of Paris V&CC.
More than 1,000 bikers entered this year’s Tour de Paris, surpassing numbers tallied in the 25 previous rallies.
The Leadership Lamar County board is getting ready for its next class. There are 21 signed up with room for 30. Registration closes today. The leadership retreat is set for Saturday, Aug. 14, at Quail Hunting Ranch. The group will begin the new class year with a refined set of bylaws, which was approved unanimously by the board.
“We hammered out the bylaws, cleared up a set of changes and need it to be ratified by the chamber board,” Tami Birch said.
The class is also accepting proposals for project requests. There are currently two proposals submitted for the class to consider.
Earl Erickson, a member of Friends of the Trail de Paris, was invited to inform the board of the legality of the railroad corridor in relation to the proposed hiking/biking trail from Farmersville to Texarkana.
Some landowners along the route have expressed concern about the trail passing through their property, considering the rail property abandoned.
In 1983, Congress amended the Rail Bank program to put the rail beds in a bank for future trail use. Federal and state law protects rail banks, Erickson said.
There are many rails in the area, and some of them may have been abandoned and could be reverted back to the landowner, he said.
However, “this rail is rail-banked, so it’s treated as not abandoned,” Erickson said.
The rail in question runs from Farmerville through Ladonia, Roxton and Paris to Clarksville to Texarkana. There is a plan to develop the rail bed into a hiking/biking trail along the 130-mile corridor.
Future events for the chamber include the chamber board retreat in August, the annual chamber banquet in October and a political forum in the fall.
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