More than 15 months after voters approved a dedicated 2% hotel-motel tax to fund a new Baton Rouge North Economic Development District, the agency’s board of directors has finally collected sufficient tax money to hire two permanent staffers.
Earlier this week, the board began advertising for a full-time executive director with a salary not to exceed $55,000, and a part-time marketing specialist with a salary not to exceed $22,900.
Board chairman Ron Smith says the BRNEDD has been receiving tax revenue from the parish since December, with amounts varying between $12,000 and $16,000 a month. The board, he says, was not comfortable hiring permanent staff until it had a clear picture of its revenue stream, which is now budgeted to be $13,000 per month, or $156,000 a year.
Uncertain is what the creation of the permanent positions will mean for Rinaldi Jacobs and Woodrow Muhammad, who have been running the agency for much of the past year. Jacobs, an advocate for the BRNEDD before it was even created, served on a volunteer basis as its interim director until December, when he was placed under contract at a rate of $5,000 per month to perform several specific executive tasks.
Woodrow, a land use planner and former planning director in Central, began working with the agency last year on an interim basis and was given a contract identical to that of Jacobs in December, Smith says.
Though Jacobs is often quoted in the media and misidentified as the BRNEDD’s interim executive director, Smith says neither Jacobs nor Muhammad has a title and that both have been equals at the agency since being placed under contract in December, the first month the agency had funding.
Given that dynamic—and the fact that the board has only created one executive-level position—it seems unlikely both will stick around once the new executive director is hired. But Smith says it’s too soon to say.
“We might hire both of them. We might hire neither,” he says. “It depends on what applicants we get.”
Smith says the board is not trying to squeeze out either of them, adding both men have done “an exceptional job—and without a dime.”
For his part, Jacobs says he will apply for the executive director’s position, not the marketing specialist, and that while he hopes to continue working with the agency he wants what is best for the community.
“It’s not my seat,” Jacobs says. “It’s the peoples’ seat and if they choose differently, that’s okay. I’m cool.”
Muhammad declines to say which position, if either, he is seeking.
“We’ll just have to wait and see how it all shakes out,” he says.
