Centennial committee reviews event sales, refunds and online-payment issue

At the meeting, Member Adam Thompson reported sales and refunds tied to Centennial events and flagged technical problems with the city's online merchant portal.

Thompson said the group had sold 14 shirts and four challenge coins to date. He told the committee that checks for the fishing-tournament winners were issued but only one prize had been picked up. Thompson said the city refunded $300 to “Mr. Nappy” and $100 to Laurie Simpson after duplicate payments and that one person’s credit-card payments produced multiple processing fees that were refunded.

The committee discussed difficulties accessing purchaser contact fields in the vendor’s merchant portal. Thompson and staff said the payment processor holds address and cardholder details and that the portal was not returning full purchaser data when staff viewed the event transactions; staff said they had contacted the merchant service to restore the missing fields. Committee members said full contact information is necessary for follow-up with vendors and prize winners and for outreach in future events.

Thompson asked staff to change the budget column headers on the event spreadsheet to read “budget remaining” or “unbudgeted amount” so reports more clearly reflect available funds. He also noted a $180 purchase for the time capsule and four signs for the business expo; staff said one line item related to the canceled golf scramble should be removed and that $200 had been spent related to the car scramble.