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Property owner faults Little Falls City snow removal, questions tourism marketing funding
Summary
At the Dec. 1 Little Falls City Council meeting, property owner Shane Cole criticized the city's snow-removal response after a busy retail weekend and said the city's restaurant/tourism sales-tax money is routed to a nonprofit that requires dues and appears to promote businesses outside Little Falls City.
Shane Cole, a property and business owner who said he owns properties in Little Falls City, criticized the city's snow removal and questioned how tourism-marketing dollars are spent at the Little Falls City Council meeting on Dec. 1, 2020.
Cole told the council that a major retail weekend that included a Santa parade and Small Business Saturday produced weak sales for some businesses and said snow removal contributed to the problem. He urged the council to address the city's performance, saying the response was inadequate.
Cole also raised concerns about how the city spends restaurant- and tourism-sales-tax revenue. "The city of Little Falls has a sales tax for restaurants and the citizens of Little Falls pay for those. It goes directly to the city of Little Falls to pay for marketing for tourism," he said, adding that the city currently routes those funds to "a nonprofit organization to deal with that issue to um market tourism." Cole said membership in that nonprofit requires dues and that the brochure and website produced with those funds feature businesses that are outside the city. "On that page, we have businesses that are not in the city of Little Falls. They are in the county, but they are paying they're getting a benefit and and we are advertising for other citizens and other businesses that are not part of the city," he said.
The council did not take immediate action on Cole's concerns during the meeting. City officials present did not provide an on-the-record response identifying the nonprofit by name or detailing contractual terms for tourism-marketing services during the session.
Cole's remarks combined two distinct concerns: public-works performance (snow removal) and the governance of tourism-marketing funds. Both touch on city operations and spending, and they were raised during the public-comment portion of the Dec. 1 meeting. The council later acknowledged a high volume of constituent calls about snow removal and signaled it would continue the conversation in a subsequent session.
Next steps: Council members said they would return to the snow-removal issue in a resumed special session after the regular meeting; no formal motion or vote on the tourism-funding arrangement was recorded that night.
