Picking up where they left

off, the Peachtree City Tourism Association is proceeding with plans to

run the Frederick Brown Jr. Amphitheater and Peachtree City Tennis Center,

plans sidelined a month ago by two lame-duck city council members.

City Manager Bernard McMullen,

who serves on the inaugural Tourism Board of Directors, said a City Council

with two new members will be asked on Monday to approve a budget for the

non-profit group starting Jan. 19 and continuing through Sept. 30, the

end of the city's fiscal year.

But one of the councilmen to

be sworn in Monday, Judi-ann Rutherford, has said she will recuse herself

from considering Tourism Association business until her employment situation

is settled once and for all.

Rutherford has resigned her

job as office manager of the amphitheater effective Friday, Jan. 2. McMullen

wouldn't indicate whether she was clear to be rehired after Jan.

19, adding that the Tourism Association still must consider policies regarding

hiring and staffing before it can advertise to fill her job and other

vacancies.

"But it does seem like

things are moving along positively for a change," said McMullen,

who has taken the lead in creating the Tourism Association to take on

duties formally held by the city's Development Authority.

The Tourism Association was

set to meet Tuesday night for the first time since late November, to consider

budget changes made necessary by the city's temporary employment

of workers at the venues.

One positive effect in the

delay in transferring management to the Tourism Association has been a

fine-tuning of the Tennis Center budget, which makes the facility 100

percent self-sustaining, McMullen said.

Previously, the Tennis Center

was budgeted to use as much as $100,000 in city hotel-motel tax money

as a revenue cushion in case of shortfalls later next year.

"In actuality when you

look at the Tennis Center budget, October through the early part of January

is when they ran a deficit and the remainder of the year is when they

ran a surplus," McMullen said. "So when you look at the eight

months ahead you can manage it without hotel-motel tax money. The revenue

is there."

Additionally, revenue from

the operation of the Tennis Center Pro Shop was not factored into the

original budget plan, said McMullen.

Former DAPC Executive Director

Virgil Christian owned the rent-free lease on the pro shop and kept any

revenues, but a request for proposals being shopped around to potential

tenants calls for the facility to generate a minimum of $2,500 monthly

in rent, starting in February.

The amphitheater was already

proposed to be self-supporting through 2004.

That leaves the hundreds of

thousands in revenue from the hotel-motel tax available for other tourism-related

expenses, said McMullen, many of which are covered in the city's

general fund now.

Doubts about the non-profit,

tax-exempt status of the Tourism Association are also less of a concern,

McMullen said.

The application that tax-free

status has been considered by the IRS, said McMullen. "We've

received correspondence with our tax consultants, and we've gotten

positive feedback through them from the IRS."

Pending IRS approval, the board

of directors will move forward with the final submission of paperwork

required to manage the guest tax revenue, McMullen said.

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