After Trump campaign bill goes unpaid, St. Cloud changes policy for charging event fees

St. Cloud has adopted new rules for recovering the costs of services it provides at special events.

The action was spurred in part by an unpaid bill for security and other services St. Cloud provided for then-presidential candidate Donald Trump's campaign rally last summer.

The city billed the Trump campaign almost $209,000 for police, fire and information technology services and for changing a road construction project during the July 27 rally at St. Cloud State University.

The ordinance change the City Council approved last week is broader than just political rallies, however. City Clerk Seth Kauffman said the city is looking to recover staff time for providing police officers and setting up barriers at festivals, parades and other events.

"We wanted to put this in the ordinance so that we could have a little more bite when we ask, saying, ‘No, these are the actual costs that the city has. We're not charging you exorbitantly for you to host your event,’” Kauffman said. “This is what we need to recover, because it is above and beyond the scope of what we're budgeted to do."

Previously, the city didn’t notify organizers in advance about the costs of a special event, said St. Cloud Mayor Jake Anderson. That created some issues for groups that hadn’t raised funds to cover those expenses, he said. 

“Usually rallies and or events occur on weekends or after hours. They're never Monday through Friday, so we're having to pay people overtime to come in,” Anderson said. “We're looking at bills of sometimes $5,000 to $10,000 that organizers weren't aware of ahead of time.”

Visits by presidential candidates to St. Cloud are rare. The last one before Trump was President George W. Bush in 2004, Anderson said. 

But the city routinely provides policing and other services for parades, festivals, races and other events. The goal is to set clear and consistent rules for what costs the city expects to recover, Anderson said.

“We're just trying to standardize the process, so that any group that wants to hold any type of event that's going to require city services is provided a cost estimate upfront that they agree to,” he said.

Changing the ordinance was the first step, Kauffman said. Later this year, city officials will set additional fees and make changes to permits for special events.

Anderson said the city will continue to send invoices to the Trump campaign, but the likelihood of it being paid is “probably low to none.” There’s disagreement between the campaign and the Secret Service over who is responsible for the bill, Anderson said.

“We'll be smarter about visits in the future, I think,” he said. “But again, it happens once every 20 years.”