ORLANDO, Fla. — Orange County commissioners will discuss on Tuesday whether to give $5 million to the city of Orlando to build a permanent Pulse memorial.
Overall, the project is set to cost $12 million.
But before the county commits to giving the city that money, Commissioners Kelly Semrad and Mayra Uribe want to see what happened to the more than $20 million onePULSE Foundation raised for the memorial. The defunct nonprofit never accomplished its primary goal of building a permanent memorial.
The city of Orlando says it has no authority to audit or review onePULSE’s finances.
“My biggest overarching question is where did the money go?,” said Semrad. “Before any other further transaction of money occurs, we need make sure that this doesn’t happen again.”
Comptroller Phil Diamond says onePULSE Foundation spent about $6.5 million of the $10 million Orange County gave in tourist development tax dollars in 2018.
Only about $3 million will be able to be recovered if the county sells property on Kaley Street, Diamond says. onePULSE Foundation bought the warehouse property for the proposed museum with TDT funds. The nonprofit gave the property back to Orange County when it dissolved.
Semrad says she wants an audit or some kind of investigation into how all the fundraised money was used before Orange County gives more money.
“To provide some form of transparency, some form of financial accountability, and to make sure that we have turned over every stone to make sure that we’ve done what we can to account for people who donated to a cause that they believed in and that the community supported,” Semrad said.
But Commissioner Mike Scott says the city isn’t the entity to be answering these questions.
“Those questions are for the foundation. I think folks are kind of tying the city to that. And while the city may have had like significant engagement, it was a wholly, completely separate legal entity,” Scott said.
The city says it does not have any authority to audit or review finances of any nonprofit, especially since onePULSE dissolved. The city also said it had no financial involvement with the foundation.
Mayor Buddy Dyer’s chief of staff will be in front of commission Tuesday, asking commissioners for this money and answering their questions.
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