The National Civil War Museum in Reservoir Park.
Harrisburg’s City Council voted unanimously Tuesday evening to join Mayor Eric Papenfuse’s request to the Dauphin County commissioners to suspend the portion of hotel tax funding that is sent under contract each year to the National Civil War Museum.
The resolution, which did not appear on the agenda and was introduced towards the end of council’s first session back after summer vacation, cites the city’s recent “profound fiscal distress” as well as the museum’s inability to show “measurable, tangible economic benefit to tourism” in Harrisburg as reasons why its funding stream should be cut off.
In his presentation Tuesday night, Mayor Papenfuse said that an affirmative vote from council would be a “show of unity” to county commissioners that the city no longer wished to subsidize the museum’s operations.
Papenfuse made his initial request to the county commissioners at their July 30 hearing. During that presentation, he noted that the museum received around $300,000 per year from a portion of county hotel taxes designated by ordinance for promoting tourism within the city. That money, he said, went to cover a portion of the museum’s more than $1 million in operating expenses.
Additionally, Papenfuse said, the museum paid only $1 to the city in rent on a facility whose fair market value is listed in the museum’s own financial statements at $633,000 per year. The building was constructed with state RACP funding of $16.2 million.
The rent also includes the use of city-owned artifacts, which the city purchased over the course of several years for somewhere between $16 and $18 million.
Papenfuse added that the hotel tax funding and the rent were fixed by agreements that had been extended—one of them out to 2039—in the “waning days” of the administration of former Mayor Stephen Reed. Reed, who spearheaded the Civil War Museum’s construction, is listed in exhibits at the site as the museum’s founder.
Council members mostly expressed dismay Tuesday night at the extent of city subsidies of the museum, as well as the absence of any council vote or discussion on the agreements that stipulate the current funding arrangement.
Councilwoman Susan Brown-Wilson, who shook her head as the mayor quoted the museum’s rent payment, also suggested that the museum needed new board members that better reflected the community.
Councilman Ben Allatt, the chair of the budget and finance committee, said he would like to invite museum directors to make their case before council. He said he would invite them to a committee meeting on Sept. 16.
In addition to the hotel tax and the rent agreement, the city has also made several direct payments to the museum since 2000. On Tuesday before council, the administration cited a figure of $12 million for these payments, and the resolution refers to the same number in its recitals.
A budget printout previously provided to TheBurg, however, shows only $1.2 million in such payments. Bruce Weber, the city’s budget and finance director, later said the administration had misspoken, and that the correct figure was $1.2 million.
The hotel tax is a 5-percent tax on overnight lodging in Dauphin County hotels. Under county ordinance, the city currently receives around $750,000 per year in hotel taxes, which is sent directly to its general fund. A second portion, around $500,000 per year, goes to a visitors bureau to be spent on promoting tourism in the city. It is out of this second portion that the museum receives its contractually established payment of around $300,000.
The National Civil War Museum opened in February, 2001, and is open 361 days per year. After a first-year high of around 96,000 visitors, its annual attendance has fluctuated between 38,000 and 41,000 for the past five years. In a recent conversation with TheBurg, museum board members spoke proudly of their efforts to reduce the museum’s operating expenses, which once covered a much larger staff and totaled upwards of $2.5 million.
For an in-depth feature on Mayor Papenfuse’s request regarding the National Civil War Museum, including an extended interview with the museum board, see the September issue of TheBurg, which will hit newsstands Friday.
