Ad commission appoints Dunkel to full term and OKs 2024 budget on Monday
The Hot Springs Advertising and Promotion Commission selected a new commissioner and approved the 2024 budget Monday during its final meeting of the year at the Hot Springs Convention Center.
Stubby’s BBQ owner Chris Dunkel, who was appointed to Position 6 on the commission in August of 2021 after former Ohio Club owner Mike Pettey resigned, was selected by the commission to retain the position for a full four-year term.
Superior Bathhouse Brewery owner Rose Schweikhart also applied for the position. Dunkel received five of the six ballot votes while Schweikhart received one.
Dunkel, who served as vice chair of the commission for 2023, will not retain the position for 2024, but Chairman Wayne Smith will continue in the position without opposition. Robert Zunick was elected vice chair of the commission.
The 2024 budget was approved without discussion.
A copy of the budget was provided to commissioners in November to give members time to read over the financial plan for the new year. Arrison told the commission Monday the budget was “very flat, very conservative.”
“It’s sort of like this year’s budget,” he said. “Hopefully, we’re outperforming it, and when we do outperform it, we’re we’re continually putting money in the convention center. It’s 26 years old. We’ve done over $2 million this year, and we’ll do over $2 million in capital next year and we’ll be good to go for another 26, 27 years.”
Arrison said one of the biggest changes to the budget was to raise the base salary for new and current employees to at least $15.
“All employees in all departments are eligible for up to a 5% increase,” he told
The Sentinel-Record last month. “We’ve taken the bottom level up this year, where entry here is $15 an hour for any position, so we’re trying to get all our people up because we’re losing people like everybody else. So there’s a 5% based on a good performance evaluation. It’s not guaranteed you get anywhere between zero and 5%.”
The commission also approved the 2022 audit. FORVIS, an accounting firm that also does the city of Hot Springs’ audits, took over the audit for Visit Hot Springs after Crass & Smith PA, the firm that had been doing the audit before, was bought out by ATA. ATA said earlier this year it
was unable to start and complete its audit.
Kyle Elmore, a CPA with FORVIS, told the commission that there were no changes needed for the 2022 financials.
“Everything went really well,” he said. Visit Hot Springs CFO Vicky Ross “really has things in good working order as far as financials go. I do apologize for the delay on getting this to you. I’m sure you’re used to getting this earlier in the year, and going forward, hopefully, we can do that. Just this first year — in the first year of an audit, we put a lot of work on … just understanding the numbers, the documentation, how everything works. So a lot of goes into that first year.”
Elmore said the auditor’s report said there is “a clean, unmodified opinion on the financial statements.”
“That’s what you want to hear,” he said. “So these are management’s financial statements. We do the testing. We do the auditing, and then we actually draft this audit report and this document. However, it’s still management’s documents, management’s numbers. I’m sending in drafts to Vicky. She’s telling me, ‘This is in the wrong space; move it down here,’ to make sure everything is accurate for y’all.”
One significant change was made to the employee handbook for 2024. The “sick bank” accruals will be frozen for all employees at the end of the year with no further accrual for current employees in excess of 240 total hours.
Arrison said the bank had only been used “twice in 27 years.”
“We want to cap it at 240 hours, which is six weeks, for all employees,” he said. “Once they hit the 240, they have the 240, and there’s very specific reasons how you can use it down here and how it has to be approved. But our payroll system just keeps accruing, accruing, accruing, and I mean, the sky can be the limit. I think we need to cap it. As I’ve said it’s been used twice. It’s a great program to have.”
The commission approved the change without opposition.