No director, no program: Holly DDA director position tabled

HOLLY, Michigan – The burning question in Holly these days seems to be what to do about the vacant Downtown Development Authority director position, but after the March 8 DDA Board of Directors meeting, the decision is still up for debate.

Last week, Village President Pete Clemens said Village Manager Marsha Powers would be assuming the duties of Holly’s DDA director and putting the $28,000 to $32,000 in director wages back into the village’s general fund.

Before Monday’s meeting, Powers emailed Robert Donohue, program coordinator for the Main Street Oakland County, asking him if there are other communities in which village or city managers serve as the DDA director, augmenting daily and event operations with an event coordinator or staff position. His response wasn’t the one most villagers expected to hear.

Powers included a copy of Donohue’s email responses in DDA board member packets for their review.

“At this time, none of the 11 MSOC communities have city managers serving as the DDA executive director,” Donohue wrote. Donohue said in the past, city employees for Royal Oak, Lake Orion and Walled Lake had served in that capacity while the DDAs for those communities hired a separate DDA downtown manager. “Many negative issues developed and the National Trust and the National Main Street Center advised us not to do that any longer.”

Donohue said the Main Street Program is a nationally trademarked program of the National Trust for Historic Preservation (NTHP) in Washington D.C. and that it’s their requirement that the Main Street Manager/DDA executive director for communities numbering more than 5,000 residents be full-time.

Having a contract with the NTHP, Donohue said MSOC must follow all of the same criteria the village of Holly must follow during their yearly accreditation evaluations, most specifically the seventh criteria that requires hiring a full-time DDA executive director/Main Street manager whose sole focus is the DDA/ downtown.

In light of the economic downturn, however, Donohue said MSOC has utilized some flexibility by developing a “Flexible Full-Time” position.

“Flexible Full-Time, in our opinion as we apply it to our MSOC communities, is when the DDA executive director/Main Street manager clearly is paid for less than 40 hours, but in actuality, with evening meetings and events, weekend events, and unscheduled necessary daily meetings that may occur over a one-year period, the average for the whole year is easily over 40 hours or more per week,” Donohue wrote. “Given that scenario, we have MSOC managers/DDA executive directors who are hired as ‘part time’ at 25 hours per week, who actually work 35 to 50 hours per week although they’re only getting paid for 25 hours.”

Donohue said if Holly hires a part-time DDA executive director using the criteria he described, paying $15 to $20 per hour, and ensuring that the sole focus of that individual is the DDA, not an additional title to shared responsibilities for an existing village employee, MSOC would consider the position “flexible full-time” for their purposes and as well as the national trademark requirements.

“We want Holly to keep up the momentum for downtown and have a comprehensive, community-involved system (Main Street) in place to continue to maximize the economic and tax generating potential of the entire DDA,” Donohue wrote. Donohue said the “flexible full-time” status could remain in place until such a time the economy turns around, giving Holly officials the opportunity to return the DDA executive director back to full-time status.  “We certainly want to do everything we can to allow Holly to remain part of the MSOC Program, however, without such a person, Holly would not be eligible to participate under the terms now in place.”

During Monday’s meeting, John Winglemire, DDA board chairman broached the topic with board members.

“With applicants and resumes and now that we know that our budget is going to be cut, maybe we’re gong to have to look into a part-time director,” he said. “We wanted a full-time, but there are different descriptions of what a part-time and full-time director can do,” he added while referring to Donohue’s email. “There are a lot of options.”

“I make the motion that we keep it tabled until we find out exactly what the village is going to need from us and decide what to do from there,” board member Marty Lorenz said. With that, fellow board member Lisa Clark seconded the motion.

Unanimously, all board members agreed to table the issue.

Powers said the village of Holly’s Main Street accreditation for 2009 was recently renewed in January, and that renewal for 2010 is slated for January of 2011.