Elon University withheld payments to municipality for months
A dispute over fire inspections has given Elon’s municipal leaders a newfound appreciation for the tenuousness of the financial support that they regularly get from the town’s eponymous university.
At issue in this case of town-gown relations is an annual contribution of several hundred thousand dollars that Elon University has traditionally shared with the small town that has inherited its name. Although these funds have fluctuated over the years, they currently account for nearly $500,000 – or about 3.6 percent of the revenue that’s expected to come into the town’s general fund this fiscal year.
According to Elon’s town manager Richard Roedner, the town’s administrators had more or less assumed they could bank on this revenue until a few months ago, when an unexpected decision by the university’s higherups forced them to reassess just how secure these funds really are.
“This past November, they said they were putting their contributions to the town on hold. We had discussions with them in the late fall into the winter, and they have agreed to provide funding for the current year and the next budget year.
“You’ve asked if [ELON UNIVERSITY] passed all of their fire inspections with flying colors. They have not, and it is taking much longer to do the inspections than anyone expected.”
– Elon town manager Richard Roedner
“This past November, they said they were putting their contributions to the town on hold,” Roedner recalled in an interview earlier this week. “We had discussions with them in the late fall into the winter, and they have agreed to provide funding for the current year and the next budget year.”
Roedner attributed the temporary halt of these funds to the university’s lukewarm response to a part-time fire marshal that the town of Elon brought aboard about a year and half ago.
The town manager noted that this new staff member has, for the first time, enabled the town to enforce the state fire code within its own borders. Yet, this change hasn’t been entirely without hiccups for Elon University, which had previously looked to Alamance County’s fire marshal to certify that its facilities comply with the state’s regulations.
Patrick Noltemeyer, the chief of staff to the university’s board of trustees, conceded that he and his colleagues have found it a bit difficult to come to terms with this new fire safety regime.
“The town, in the interest of greater attention to safety, made a decision to bring on a fire marshal locally, and we were going through a period of adjustment with the new fire marshal in place.
“[About stopping the university’s payments to the town] It was just a temporary pause. There are other ways for us to invest our funds, and we now feel that the best investment for us is our continued support of the town.”
–Chief of Staff and Secretary to the Elon University Board of Trustees and Associate Vice President
“The town, in the interest of greater attention to safety, made a decision to bring on a fire marshal locally,” Noltemeyer recalled in an interview, “and we were going through a period of adjustment with the new fire marshal in place.”
Roedner, likewise, admits that the transition hasn’t been altogether smooth from the municipality’s perspective.
“You’ve asked if they’ve passed all of their fire inspections with flying colors. They have not,” he said, “and it is taking much longer to do the inspections than anyone expected.”
Noltemeyer acknowledged that, as part of the ongoing “adjustment” to this new state of affairs, the university had halted its payments to Elon’s municipal government.
“It was just a temporary pause,” he went on to elaborate. “There are other ways for us to invest our funds, and we now feel that the best investment for us is our continued support of the town.”
In the wake of the university’s decision, Elon’s municipal leaders have reached out to their collegiate counterparts to address some of their concerns over the town’s fire inspections. During the months of November and December, Roedner and Noltemeyer swapped several emails about these regulatory reviews, as the university has leaned on the town for speedier feedback on things like boiler room upgrades and an emergency radio booster system for a proposed campus health center. The university has also asked the town to untangle a jurisdictional mix-up with the county over permits and explore new, more efficient software for accessing state records.
These negotiations over the town’s fire inspections haven’t been a complete walk over for the university. Roedner has, for example, rebuffed the suggestion that the town should “engage the city of Burlington” to review building plans on its behalf. He has also resisted a request from the university that the town’s fire marshal Brian Graves touch base with campus police when he visits facilities on the university’s campus.
“I believe this is an unnecessary intrusion on his ability to do his job,” Roedner declared in an email to Noltemeyer on January 16. “In most cases, when fire marshal Graves is on campus for an inspection, he has already made arrangements with the appropriate people.”
Yet the town’s efforts to meet its critics halfway have apparently been enough to persuade the university’s top brass to restore the flow of revenue to Elon’s municipal government.
As of last week, when Roedner presented his proposed budget for the next fiscal year, the town had received about 40 percent of the $491,074 that it had expected the university to provide during the current financial cycle. Included in these remittances is $8,100 for the town’s general government, another $15,450 for its police force, and $44,000 for downtown development. The university has also passed along three fourths of the $198,524 that it had previously pledged for personnel at the town’s fire department.
In the meantime, Noltemeyer has notified Roedner that another $225,000 should be forthcoming to help offset the town’s recent $2 million expenditure on a new ladder truck for its fire department.
“This payment is funded through our year-end balance,” Noltemeyer explained in an email on February 19. “[It] will be remitted in early June, after the close of our fiscal year on May 31.”
In addition to the resumption of payments, the university’s administrators have pledged their ongoing financial backing for the town’s municipal operations. Roedner acknowledged, for instance, that collegiate authorities have indicated they’ll provide a second year of reimbursements for the town’s new ladder truck, while they’ve promised an even longer commitment to other municipal expenses.
“It’s a 10-year letter that they’re giving us,” he added, “[although] our attorney says it’s not [contractually binding].”
In spite of the gestures on the university’s part, the town’s leaders have remained on tenterhooks over the continued good will of their collegiate patron.
In fact, Roedner was careful to refer to the university’s payments as “gifts” when he appeared before Elon’s town council last week with a proposed budget for the next fiscal year. The town manager also alluded to his uncertainty over the university’s revenues when he recommended a 5-cent increase in property taxes as part of his proposed spending plan for the town.
Noltemeyer is nevertheless adamant that the town has no reason to keep sweating the possibility that the university will renege on its promises to its municipal namesake.
“We continue to have a strong relationship with the town and we appreciate everything that the town is doing to keep students safe,” the trustees’ chief of staff declared. “There are multiple things that could be in limbo,” he added. “But that’s our goal – to maintain our financial commitment to the town.”
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