Denver Direct: Conflict of Interest?


Wednesday, April 11, 2007

Conflict of Interest?

In her recent answer (posted on Denver Politics) to a question regarding payments by CPWNA to her husband Paul Weiss, Carla Madison states:

“The money Paul gets for organizing the festival is not significant, never topping $3000 for 6 months worth of work.”

But in an email to CPWNA members on June 15, 2003 Madison stated:

“Paul Weiss’s fee as event coordiator (sic) for the City Park Festival of the Arts is $3500. This is based on the figure that Uptown pays to it’s event coordiator (sic) for the Sampler. If there are remaining monies left that had been raised for the Festival, Paul and the CPWNA will split the next $2000.Money left beyond this amount will stay in the Festival fund as seed moneyfor the Festival for the following year.

The way it went this year, with our increase in costs, after Paul’s fee is taken out of the balance, there will be approximately $1500 left. This means that the neighborhood association will have $750 put into it’s regular account for any use the Association sees fit. Paul will also get an additional $750. The reason this last amount is a split between Paul and the CPWNA is as an incentive to increase fund raising, which Paul is also solely responsible for.”

That year Weiss received $4250, well over the $3000 Madison claimed. That year the entire budget for CPWNA (exclusive of the Festival Special Account run by Weiss) was $3224.25. So the amount paid to Weiss was very significant.