My “no” vote on the $13.8 million subsidy to ACCA

I was one of the two Aurora City Council members to vote “no” on an $13.8 Million subsidy to ACCA this past Tuesday. ACCA is an abbreviation for the Aurora Civic Center Authority that is comprised of the Paramount Theater, River Edge Park, Copley Theater, Stolp Island Theater and the Paramount Center for the Arts. As I indicated in the Committee of the Whole (COW) meeting, I would have voted for a $3.8 Million subsidy to cover the costs to repair the Riverwalk Promenade and the rest of the construction costs for the Stolp Island Theater, but here is why I voted “no”.

1. During COVID (July 2021), ACCA received a $10 Million subsidy from the federal government via a Save Our Stages Grant to cover operating losses even though ACCA furloughed many of their employees.
2. Over the course of the next two years the Aurora City Council gave ACCA another $11.5 Million in subsidies to cover operating budget shortfalls, claiming it was necessary to recover from COVID. I was on the council when the second bundle of cash was voted on and I asked, “how much is this annual operating budget shortfall going to be and how do we close the gap?” As far back as December of 2022, the council was promised that they would get some explanation as to how this money would be spent.
3. Instead of coming up with a rational approach to run a more balanced budget, the Irvin Administration dropped a bomb that their plan to close the hole was to build a bigger, 4,000-person entertainment venue, the City of Lights Center (CLC). Ten days later they expected the council to vote on phase 1 of this measure (the $13.8M).
4. Community pushback was swift and other aldermen started asking questions, prompting the administration to pull back from their original ask to “approve the whole concept” and instead said, “we are only asking you to approve phase 1.” Once again, the Irvin Administration is saying, “give us the money and we will provide answers later.” I will never understand how the rest of the council goes along with this.
5. A long list of my questions about the parking garage and the CLC went unanswered. An hour before last night’s vote, ACCA sent over some responses to some of my Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests. I’m still sifting through these answers.
6. The $10M expenditure to buy the parking garage across the street from the casino is owned by ACCA and is leased/maintained by the casino for $14,000 a month. The casino will be there for another 2 years, and using this garage. There is no hurry to buy this garage, so I am pretty much calling it like I see it. This is a way to shovel $10M more money to ACCA. If anything, it will be an added burden to the taxpayers by assuming garage maintenance costs for the next two years and beyond.

There is a lot of misinformation or no information coming from ACCA and the Irvin administration on this topic:

As an example, during early meetings (Finance Committee and COW), ACCA and city officials told the council that pre-COVID ACCA was sustainable. The truth from the last pre-COVID audit in 2019 shows that ACCA depended on $3.7 Million in subsidies before COVID. (See Exhibit 1)

There was NO information on the actual parking garage. During the finance committee meeting discussion, an alderman asked if an appraisal had been done – no copy of the appraisal was provided, as promised. I asked who had paid to build this parking garage initially. I still don’t know the answer, but it wouldn’t shock me to learn the Aurora taxpayers are paying twice for this garage. Here is the exchange in which I point out how the Irvin Administration attempted to dodge the question and then failed to answer the question when I pointed out that they did not answer what I had asked (See Exhibit 2).

Instead of a 4,000-person concert venue, what I was expecting to see was a combination of belt-tightening measures for acca that could include:

1. Doing an actual market study to see how more successful theaters are selling their subscriptions and tickets. We have the highest subscription rate in the nation because we have a buy two, get two free subscription program, or buy three shows for $75 (see Exhibit 2)
2. We need to look at how ACCA is pricing their shows and how that compares to other theaters.
3. ACCA needs to look at more corporate sponsorship opportunities.
4. Reducing shows to meet demand – if we are not filling seats in any of our theaters, we need to look at ways to reduce the number of shows for that series, particularly with the Bold Series.
5. Copley Theater alone has lost $1.5 Million without operating grants.
6. Both Copley Theater and the School of the Arts are hemorrhaging money, and we need to look at ways to either cut back on some of these programs or merge the School of the Arts program with the Fox Valley Park District’s theater classes.

We need more analysis of the return on investment ROI) of ACCA:

We need to see better analysis of what the return on investment would be in Food and Beverage tax. By this I mean we need to determine what the total downtown and adjacent downtown restaurants are producing in Food and Beverage tax, adjusted for inflation, and we need to subtract the amounts that are going into tax-sharing agreements with many of the restaurants that are being subsidized. The Irvin Administration’s narrative is that we make back all of these costs by increased food and beverage tax. To date no analysis has been done to corroborate this narrative. It’s just another politician making things up.

Exhibit 1

Exhibit 2