Elon University withheld payments to municipality for months
A dispute over fire inspections has given Elon’s municipal leaders a newfound appreciation for the tenuousness of the financial support that they regularly get from the town’s eponymous university.
At issue in this case of town-gown relations is an annual contribution of several hundred thousand dollars that Elon University has traditionally shared with the small town that has inherited its name. Although these funds have fluctuated over the years, they currently account for nearly $500,000 – or about 3.6 percent of the revenue that’s expected to come into the town’s general fund this fiscal year.
According to Elon’s town manager Richard Roedner, the town’s administrators had more or less assumed they could bank on this revenue until a few months ago, when an unexpected decision by the university’s higherups forced them to reassess just how secure these funds really are.
“This past November, they said they were putting their contributions to the town on hold. We had discussions with them in the late fall into the winter, and they have agreed to provide funding for the current year and the next budget year…