The following announcement was made by the Peoria Civic Center yesterday:

At the direction of the Peoria Civic Center Authority, I am attaching a recent memo regarding the adjustments that SMG management is making for the rest of the seven months of our fiscal year.

We felt it would be prudent moving forward to budget very conservatively due to a very uncertain immediate future. While we are not far off budget through December, 2008, we do not currently see a clear line of sight to August 31, 2009 as compared to our budget, created in May 2008.

Our goals are to preserve cash flow as well as monitor revenues and expenditures very closely in times that could very well see a downturn of activity.

The Peoria Civic Center Authority and SMG and Centerplate take our stewardship of the Peoria Civic Center and all its assets very seriously. Our hope is that we will be able to improve upon our conservative budget estimates in the months to come.

Councilman Manning may be able to answer questions you have or please don’t hesitate to call others or myself.

Thank you,

Debbie [Ritschel]

Here’s the text of the memo:

Fiscal 2009 Budget Cuts Outlook
January 2009

As we have been discussing for several months at the PCCA meetings, in the current economic uncertainty it is prudent to be conservative in projections of revenues and work toward significant budget cuts to balance a probable loss of revenues.

After the first four months of our fiscal year, we are between $150,000 and $200,000 behind budget. While we have said that this is not unusual for this early in the fiscal year, the current softening of touring concert ticket sales and fewer corporate meetings will make the recovery of these dollars more difficult. We therefore are making fiscal assumptions that our year end revenues beyond expenses will not meet the $109,000 loss that was budgeted. Trying to quantify what that year end number will be is far more difficult this year with so many uncertainties in the national marketplace which affects our local consumer confidence. It is this consumer confidence that encourages people to buy tickets to so many of events or allows show promoters to book shows of all types at PCC.

The SMG staff in communication with SMG Corporate and Finance Committee members has initiated the following budget adjustments totaling about $300,000-$350,000 in expenditure reductions by August 2009:

Executive pay reductions
Elimination of five full time positions
Hiring freeze for positions vacated by attrition
401 K match temporarily suspended
Travel and other regular department line items cut
Favorable business and health insurance renewals

The Capital Committee has agreed to freeze all further capital expenditures unless it meets a life safety or emergency repair threshold. This will result in an additional $300,000 positive cash flow. Combined with the above expenditure reductions, the improvement to cash flow will be $600,000-$650,000.

We are encouraged by the staff attitude of finding ways to economize and increase sales. We have a talented group of dedicated professionals who are ready to meet the economic challenge head on. We will continue to keep the Commission informed on our progress.