By Tracy Ouellette
The May 23 meeting of the East Troy Village Board saw the East Troy Community Development Alliance in the hot seat for not fully reporting to the board its activities in a timely manner and facing questions of what it has accomplished in the past two years.
Trustee Dusty Stanford, who has questioned the CDA’s effectiveness in the past, had the item placed on the agenda for discussion.
“Everybody knows I’ve had some challenges with what’s been going on with the CDA,” Stanford said. “It goes back to when I was on it and it was lots of talk and nothing getting done and it seems like we’re seeing that again now.”
The Village of East Troy has been funding the ETCDA since 2014. The group receives $10,000 a year from the village, and to date has received a total of $25,000.
Stanford said he thought there was some confusion on what the CDA was supposed to be and that he didn’t think the village had seen a good return on the money it had invested into the organization.
Stanford also brought up the fact that the CDA had not given the board its first-quarter report for 2016, which was due in April. He also mentioned that the fourth-quarter report rom 2015 wasn’t presented to the board until February of this year. He told representatives of the CDA, who were in the audience, that without those regular reports, the Village Board has no way of knowing just what’s being done to promote business growth by the organization and they had a responsibility to the taxpayers to know what the money they were giving the CDA was being used for.
Stanford also questioned how much of the money has been used, saying it didn’t appear much had been spent and if they weren’t using the money, what good was it doing anyone when it didn’t appear they were getting anything done?
ETCDA President Paul Nyffeler addressed the board after Stanford finished his laundry list of issues.
“I guess you’ve laid out a lot of things here,” Nyffeler said. “When you say you want something done, do you have specifics? I’m confused by the message I’m getting here.”
“Well, it would help if we got reports,” Stanford said.
Nyffeler defended the CDA and its “prudent” use of the money it had. He told the board that they had “just come off a very successful Connect Communities event (the Downtown Open House May 14) and he felt the CDA was on the right track and working hard within the community to promote and retain businesses.
There was a spirited debate between Stanford and many of the CDA members in the audience as to what exactly was the problem and how it could be fixed.
CDA member John Jacoby said there shouldn’t be division with the village and the alliance.
“It should be a process,” he said.
Village Board President Randy Timms jumped in to explain that there was a process with a lot of conversations between him and Nyffeler when different opportunities or “tips” came their way and that the first thing either of them did when something new was on the table was to call the other.
There was a lengthy discussion as to how important the quarterly reports were and why the CDA needed to “justify” its existence with them. This led to another long discussion on how the CDA and board could better communicate their expectations of each other and how to go about changing a system that didn’t seem to be working for anyone.
Although there was frustration expressed on both sides, the parties involved agreed that more discussion was needed and more accounting from the CDA was required before talks could continue so the board had all the information it needed to make informed decisions.
The CDA will give a report for the first half of the year to the Village Board at the June Committee of the Whole meeting and then the matter will be taken up again with the goal of improving communication and working together.
