By Debby Woodin

dwoodin@joplinglobe.com

It hasn’t been quite a year since the Joplin City Council sent the Joplin Sports Authority out on its own with $250,000 in tax dollars to do its work, but the council intends to review authority operations this month.

The council last year allowed the authority — formerly part of the Joplin Convention and Visitors Bureau — to separate from the city on a three-year contract to operate on its own. The authority wanted to be a separate entity so that it could work with area towns and organizations to promote sports events regionally.

A work session for the council on the sports authority is set for 5:45 p.m. Monday, Oct. 13.

Mayor Gary Shaw said the session is intended as a review of the authority’s work agreed upon when the contract was negotiated last year. The authority is projected to receive $260,000 next year from the hotel/motel tax.

“It’s like evaluating our employees. We want to see that they’re doing what we hired them to do,” the mayor said. “We also have three new council people who were not on the council then. They need to be brought up to speed on what JSA does for the city.”

$1.8 million

JSA director Mike Greninger said that about 35 sporting events will be produced in the Joplin area by the end of this year with nearly 40 events planned for next year. The mission of the JSA, he said, is to bring sporting events, such as the Premier Baseball World Series, to the area that result in the rental of motel rooms and associated sales for food, shopping and tourism.

Greninger said he will tell the council that those activities will translate into more than $1.8 million in economic impact for Joplin this year.

He, and the JSA’s board of directors, estimate that the sports events will fill 9,454 motel rooms for this year.

That number is not just a guess, Greninger said. The JSA created a housing bureau to locate and book rooms for visiting athletes. The estimated total of rooms is based on the number of people who go through the JSA’s housing bureau. The JSA receives a small rebate from the sale of each of those rooms, which this year will amount to about $4,435 in income for the JSA, according to figures supplied by Greninger and the board.

Other marketing figures used by the JSA show that in addition to rooms sold, the economic impact of each visitor is estimated at about $100 per day spent for food, shopping, gasoline and sightseeing. An economic-impact report will be presented to the council, citing those numbers from Smith Travel Research and the former International Association of Convention and Visitors Bureau, now known as the International Destination Marketing Organization (IDMO).

Vince Lindstrom, director of the Joplin Convention and Visitors Bureau, said there are about 2,000 motel rooms in the city and he believes the figures cited by the JSA are accurate.

“It’s a little easier for the JSA to track how many room nights they generate because ... they operate a housing bureau,” Lindstrom said. He said the other numbers also are reliable because Smith Travel and IDMO are recognized in the industry for providing that type of information.

“The IACVB, or now International Destination Marketing Organization, is a national group that does the research and comes up with the numbers on tourism. It is the group in terms of figuring economic impact,” Lindstrom said.

JSA revenue

“We’re helping pay our own way, too,” said Greninger. “It’s not just tax dollars we receive.”

This year’s revenue for the JSA, as of Sept. 3, shows that it generated more than $93,000 in addition to the tax money paid to it by the city.

That amount includes the room rebates received from the housing bureau plus $34,300 paid by area businesses in sponsorships and $54,277 in money raised from admissions, concessions and other sales at the events. The JSA expects revenue from sources other than the city to climb to $135,800 by the end of the year, providing it with a total of $385,800 in income for 2008.

City flap

But, the work hasn’t been done without controversy.

When former council member Jon Tupper’s conduct was under investigation earlier this year, an open records request filed by the Globe for e-mails turned up a flap between the city’s parks department and the JSA.

The dispute centered around whether Greninger follows city rules on reserving venues for the sports events. One e-mail alleged that Greninger tried to insert himself in a dispute that existed between Tupper and the parks department. Greninger said then that he could not have made remarks against parks department workers as one of the e-mails alleged because he was off work that day attending a funeral. He also contended that complaints about him not following the rules were overblown.

The Globe at the time filed an open records request seeking expenditures of the JSA. Itemized expenses only through May 30 were available at the time. It took the JSA several weeks to comply with the request, with officials saying they were in their busiest season and that an accountant would have to provide the numbers.

An analysis of those expenses by the Globe show that there are a number of expenses that the JSA pays that it would not had if it remained under the city umbrella.

Utilities for five months cost $5,785 and rent for the JSA office at the Southside Shopping Center at 32nd Street and Range Line was $2,585. The JSA formerly had offices in city quarters.

An employment agency also was hired to administer the JSA payroll and benefits. Administrative fees of $2,546 were paid to that firm, Employer Advantage.

JSA board president Gary Box said those administrative fees are not payments solely for doing payroll. The payments include the cost of worker compensation for JSA employees, he said.

In addition to those costs, the JSA has salaries and labor costs along with the costs of producing events: Food and venue rents.

Greninger’s salary is $47,000. There is one other full-time position that pays about $22,000 and one part-time worker whose earnings vary according to hours worked.

Paying referees is another of the sports authority’s larger costs. For the first five months, that amounted to $26,171.

“But that’s economic impact, too,” Greninger said. “That’s money that goes to local people that they take and spend on items around the city,” he said.

Food costs through May 30 included $5,198 for restaurant catering for athletes, $1,445 for meals during sales meetings with clients, and $6,251 for food bought at stores to supply athletes at events and to stock concession stands.

Venue fees

Venue fees include $2,314 paid to Joplin R-8 schools and $2,852 to Missouri Southern State University for use of fields and gyms, and smaller fees of less than $200 for golf courses.

Questions about venue fees with the city of Joplin recently surfaced at a council meeting.

Promoter Doug Bland appeared before the council to ask for permission to sell beer at a mixed martial arts match. He told the council he was paying the not-for-profit fee to rent city-owned Memorial Hall for the event, which is $1,100 less than the commercial fee would be. Bland said he was able to qualify for the fee because he was producing the event under the auspices of the JSA, and the JSA qualifies for not-for-profit use of the hall.

But Council member Bill Scearce questioned whether a promoter should be allowed the not-for-profit fee using the JSA’s standing with the city.

JSA board member Jim Frazier said Bland’s affiliation with the JSA may not have been clearly explained to the council. He said the martial arts match is a JSA event produced in association with JSA sponsors.

Box said he welcomes the chance to answer the council’s questions about the JSA. “I think the work session (with the council) will be a positive thing. I’m excited to show them what we’re doing for Joplin. I think our economic impact report will answer all their questions.”





Budget proposal

The city of Joplin’s proposed 2009 budget allocates $260,000, a raise of about $10,000, for the Joplin Sports Authority. By contract, the JSA is to receive 25 percent of the amount the city collects from its hotel and motel tax.