The "crown jewels"

in Peachtree City's civic crown, the Fred Brown Jr. Amphitheatre and the

city Tennis Center, are coming off their best years yet, observers insist,

even if the future of the quasi public-private authority that managed

them remains in doubt.

But statements on accounts

maintained by the Development Authority of Peachtree City, requested by

city officials after the authority "resigned" on Sept. 25 from

its agreement to run the venues, provide some of the first hard evidence

of the DAPC's questionable bookkeeping practices, dubbed a "shell

game" by Mayor Steve Brown.

Starting with the 2003 fiscal

year, the DAPC was to receive approximately $265,090 in hotel-motel tax

revenues for operations. That amount, by agreement, was not scheduled

to change for the next seven years.

Another $247,367 in annual

payments showed up on the city's 2003 spending plan as well, where it

will stay until 2018 to pay off a 15-year loan obtained through the Georgia

Municipal Association by the city to complete the most recent amphitheater

renovations and to pay to expand the Tennis Center.

As collateral for the loan,

the city, not the development authority, offered up City Hall and the

Leach Fire Station on Ga. Highway 74.

All total, some $512,463 in

funds were funneled last year by the city to the DAPC, but the city had

no way of monitoring where that money, all of it proceeds from the hotel-motel

tax, went once it was deposited into DAPC accounts.

Paul Salvatore, Peachtree City's

finance director, was suprised to find out last week that the DAPC was

lumping the entire $265,090 into one account, "Economic Development,"

though the city has been designating the tax revenue, distributed in monthly

payments, for very specific uses: $25,000 each to supplement the Amphitheater

and economic development efforts, and a whopping $155,000 to supplement

the Tennis Center.

Another $60,096 added by the

DAPC under "Economic Development" was earmarked specifically

payments on $1.5 million in short-term loans owed by the DAPC, alledgedly

borrowed to meet operating expenses, said Salvatore.

The balances on the other two

DAPC accounts, one for operations at the amphitheater, another for the

tennis center, suggest that had the city's appropriations been credited

under the proper accounts, both facilities would have finished the fiscal

year last week in the black.

The Sept. 25 records show the

amphitheater made $1.426 million last season on $1.314 million in expenses,

or a profit of about $111,000.

The Tennis Center, meantime,

had revenues of $897,761, while expenses as of Sept. 25 totaled $963,153,

a deficit of more than $65,000.

Mayor Brown said at Thursday's

council meeting that those figures prove that the DAPC had been using

profits from the amphitheater to cover red ink at the tennis center, which

managers agreed not to do when they raised ticket prices to shows at The

Fred last year.

Brown said the $111,945 surplus

at the concert venue would easily cover the tennis center's losses this

year, and that explains why everyone associated with the facilities were

crowing about the success of the season.

It's a "shell game,"

said Brown, especially when considering that the "Economic Development"

fund is also in the red for the year.

"That's the account they

are drawing off of to pay the legal fees in the Kristi Rapson lawsuit,"

said Salvatore, admittedly perplexed by the whole arrangement.

The federal equal pay lawsuit

filed by Rapson against the DAPC cost the authority more than $90,000

in legal fees last year, according to information leaked to the media

recently. The DAPC had not bought liability insurance to cover such lawsuits.

According to Salvatore, it was all drawn from "Economic Development,"

which as of Sept. 25 was in the red by $6,712.

"I can't find any other

explanation for why they'd disperse the funds like this," he said.

Had the Rapson lawsuit not

been an equation, and the DAPC had dispensed the subsidies from the hotel-motel

tax into the accounts as directed in the city budget, both the tennis

center and amphitheater would have been operating clearly in the black

on Sept. 30, the end of the spending year, Salvatore insists.

McMullen, on the job for barely

four months, worked around the clock and through the weekend in the days

after the DAPC first said it was quitting the venue business, only to

see the DAPC renege on its offer less than a week later to start negoatiations

with a potential private management group.

At last Thursday's council

meeting, McMullen briefly described the three alternatives his staff came

up with to keep the venues operating until a better long-range solution

could be found. When the DAPC went back on its resignation offer, the

hard work from McMullen, Salvatore, Assistant City Manager Colin Halterman

and others went by the wayside, insiders at City Hall say.

After the council meeting,

an angry affair that ran on past 11:30 p.m., a clearly frustrated McMullen

summed it up this way when asked his opinion of the latest DAPC turn a

day earlier:

"We've got to solve this

problem," he said. "We've got to. I've been here five months

and I haven't made any progress at all."

"We've got to solve this,"

he said again. "It's destroying the reputation of the city."

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