5 October 2023
DULUTH The Duluth Entertainment Convention Center has fallen on hard financial times, and in an effort to trim its annual budget by $1 million, the organization announced this week its plans to eliminate seven full-time positions from its payroll, with perhaps the most prominent post to be vacated that of Jeff Stark, the DECC’s director of operations.
In a notice to staff late last week, Dan Hartman, executive director of the DECC, said the organization’s business model was “no longer working.”
“There will be a decrease in both full-time and part-time staff hours to bridge this gap. We are analyzing our staffing models and making difficult decisions. You will hear that this equates roughly to a $1 million dollar reduction in payroll. This is a big scary number; however it represents a limited number of employees,” he wrote.
Hartman went on to say: “I recognize that there are real people behind these numbers. The very people who have pushed harder to produce more events and serve more guests than in recent memory. Please know this is not lost on me. Layoffs are what I’ve been trying to avoid by creating more events and increasing attendance at existing events. I’m sorry that it wasn’t enough.”
Without the reduction in staffing along with other changes, Hartman predicts the DECC’s financial position will worsen, forcing it to draw on a $1 million emergency line of credit the Duluth City Council reluctantly agreed to extend to the organization last month. At the time, Hartman said it remains his hope that the DECC won’t need to borrow against that line of credit, but he also acknowledged a course correction, including a slimmed-down workforce, would likely be part of the solution.
“This unfortunately not a short-term problem. This is a long-term problem,” Hartman observed, suggesting that structural change will be imperative, “because I don’t want to be in the same conversation next year.”
Three of the seven positions eliminated were unoccupied at the time of the announcement, according to Hartman, who cited a few recent resignations.
As for whether the changes already announced will be sufficient to close a $1 million budget gap, Hartman said: “This gets us very close. But I think there are still more difficult decisions down the road.”
Hartman said it remains unclear if additional staff cuts will be necessary.
One of the DECC’s most prominent regular draws, the Minnesota Duluth men’s and women’s hockey teams, both begin their seasons this weekend, with women’s games on Friday and Saturday and a men’s game on Saturday opening a slate of 35 scheduled dates.
The DECC has retained a consultant to come in, review its operations and offer recommendations later this month.
“I think that individual will provide us some guidance on other things we could do to be more efficient,” Hartman said.
Stark, a 28-year employee of the DECC, took to Facebook, to share his thoughts about learning of his Oct. 3 dismissal.
“This was an extremely difficult bit of news to take, and it upended our world. I know that it’s just a job, but it was a uniform I wore proudly for almost three decades. It’s felt like a part of my identity for so long now I’ll have to navigate untangling the person from the role,” he wrote.
Stark went on to say: “My thoughts are with the co-workers and community partners that will have to pick up the tasks that I had in the air and to all the people who made this job fun to do.”
Hartman said every layoff has been painful.
“Every employee that was part of that list held a position of value to us. That means these are duties that are now being reassigned, and that’s not easy,” he said.
“What makes this so tough is we very intentionally hire very skillful people, and to see those skills leaving is hard to see, especially knowing that they would been part of helping us find more revenue later. But we just ran out of time,” Hartman said.
Hartman pointed to the need to pay workers higher wages since the pandemic as one factor why the DECC is in trouble. He noted that about 450 of the DECC’s 500-plus employees are hourly workers whose pay has risen from $10 to $16 or $18 an hour, out of necessity to fill the posts.
He also talked about the state of the aging 10-venue facility and the many parts of its infrastructure that have fallen into disrepair. To catch up on those needs, Hartman is putting together a legislative request for more than $6 million in bonding funds next year.
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