Don’t dissolve Pasco’s downtown group without plan to continue beloved events | Opinion

Members of the Pasco City Council are right to be upset about the damning audit of the Downtown Pasco Development Authority.

Local businesses and the public should be upset, too, and not just with the DPDA. The city council is culpable in this fiasco. Yet city leaders might find some redemption by ensuring that popular DPDA events and institutions like the annual Cinco de Mayo Festival and Pasco Farmers Market flourish.

Tri-City Herald reporters Wendy Culverwell and Eric Rosane have chronicled the authority’s woes in the wake of the state audit released earlier this month.

The authority has had problems for about a decade. In 2015, the public learned the organization’s executive director had embezzled $140,000 over the prior two years. He went to jail for the offense, and the incident should have served as a wake up call for the authority to get its house in order.

It didn’t.

Financial mismanagement, bookkeeping failures and poor planning led to ballooning event costs, a lack of accountability and public distrust. The authority lacked internal financial controls to ensure that it safeguarded public funds.

Nearly $300,000 remains unaccounted for. Meanwhile, the 2022 Cinco de Mayo Festival cost more than eight times the originally budgeted amount. The public wound up on the hook for keeping the organization and its events solvent.

Authority leaders didn’t help matters by cutting the public out of the loop. The board of directors often met in secret, violating the state Open Public Meetings Act. It didn’t post agendas online, and its minutes were shoddy.

Part of the problem was a lack of continuous leadership. From 2020 to 2022, the authority hired three executive directors. So much turnover makes it hard to retain institutional memory, cultivate a culture and develop a long-term strategic plan.

The DPDA was supposed to “strengthen and develop downtown Pasco as a center for culture, business and community spirit,” as the state audit put it. In some ways it succeeded. The Pasco Farmers Market draws crowds. The Cinco de Mayo Festival is tremendous fun. And the Pasco Specialty Kitchen has become an incubator for local culinary innovators.

Yet the authority never became the self-funding, independent organization that the city originally envisioned when it created it.

Some responsibility falls squarely on the city council, which appointed the authority’s board of directors. Had city officials kept a closer eye on what was going on and demanded greater accountability, perhaps things would not have crashed so spectacularly. City council members now pointing fingers would do well to look in the mirror.

Launching criminal investigations or dissolving the DPDA, as some city leaders have proposed, might feel satisfying, but it won’t help the city move forward. Leaders must figure out how to keep the Cinco de Mayo Festival, the farmers market and the specialty kitchen solvent. That doesn’t preclude disbanding the authority, but before taking that step, officials must know what will replace it.

One option, probably the best option, is to keep management in-house at City Hall, at least until everything settles down. Already the city Parks and Recreation Department has taken over many DPDA functions. That could become a permanent arrangement.

Alternatively, the city could start over from scratch with something akin to what the authority was supposed to be, but this time with much stronger oversight and accountability.

A smart first step would be to engage with stakeholders in the community most engaged with events, be they farmers who sell their wares at the market, attendees at Cinco de Mayo or cooks in the specialty kitchen.

The DPDA has become an embarrassing public fiasco for Pasco, but it need not be a permanent blemish if city leaders clean house, set a firm course for the future and continue to reinvigorate downtown with popular events.

This story was originally published February 17, 2024 at 5:00 AM.