A feud simmers between city, business leaders in Beaufort. How did things get this nasty?

A spat between Beaufort and the city’s regional chamber of commerce that boiled over earlier this month was only the latest skirmish in a long-simmering disagreement over money, mission and the future of some of Beaufort’s most beloved events.

The current dispute has played out in meetings, pointed back-and-forth letters and on social media. It began when a request from the Beaufort Regional Chamber of Commerce to operate the Shrimp Festival was rejected by City Council earlier this month.

That led the chamber’s Board Chairman Cliff Mrkvicka to send a letter to members expressing disappointment in the decision and asking business leaders to protest it to elected officials. The chamber argued the Shrimp Festival had been in its “family” for almost 25 years and should stay there.

The city responded with a list compiled by City Manager Bill Prokop delineating what he said were the facts related to the city’s attempts to create a better working relationship with the chamber.

The upshot of those exchanges: Nothing has yet been resolved, a popular downtown event could have new handlers and the city and chamber might be headed to court.

“I just think that there’s strong feelings that ‘I’m right on this one and you’re wrong’ on both sides,” Prokop said Wednesday. “I really don’t think it’s a personal thing. I think it’s been a relationship that hasn’t been the greatest but has been worked on to be improved. I think this latest thing just pushed it off the edge and now it has to be rebuilt again.”

Attempts to reach Mrkvicka on Wednesday were unsuccessful. He said in a text message that he was out of state.

It is not the first time the two entities have clashed.

• Main Street Beaufort, a downtown business organization which traditionally received public money each year as part of the city budget, was left out of that budget n 2015 amid ongoing scrutiny led by Mayor Billy Keyserling. City officials contended the group wasn’t doing enough to grow business downtown. The organization for years operated downtown festivals, including the annual Christmas weekend events, Taste of Beaufort and the Beaufort Shrimp Festival. Without city funding and after heavy rains canceled the shrimp festival the same year, Main Street was out about $90,000 in a matter of months. The chamber announced it was absorbing Main Street in the spring of 2016 and that the organization would operate under the chamber’s umbrella.

• The chamber asked for — and didn’t receive — $140,000 from the city for Main Street in 2017. Amid questions about the future of festivals under cash-strapped Main Street, the chamber agreed to take on Taste of Beaufort and the Shrimp Festival, two money-making events. That led to a debate about the future of other city festivals. At the time, a new organization was taking shape — the Downtown Merchants Association — with an early goal of improving another downtown event, held the first Friday of each month.

• While considering opening up festival operation and downtown marketing to public bidding a year ago, city leaders questioned whether the events were the city’s to give away. It asked city attorney Bill Harvey to research ownership. The city later trademarked the names of Taste of Beaufort and Shrimp Festival, a fact chamber leaders said they weren’t aware of until early this year.

Since then:

• City and chamber officials haven’t come to an agreement over the festivals and trade names after months of discussion. The city sent the chamber a plan that included again re-establishing Main Street as a separate organization, splitting off the chamber’s tourism marketing division as an independent organization — which happened — and a plan for festivals that would include 10 percent of profits going to a city fund for park and downtown improvements.

• The chamber, however, objected to the request to pay a percentage of profits to the city. In May, a letter from a chamber attorney laid the groundwork for a possible lawsuit over the city filing for the trademarks, which the chamber argued constituted fraud.

• Without an agreement in place, the city voted to deny the chamber’s request to operate the Shrimp Festival in Waterfront Park in October and announced plans to run the festival itself. Chamber leaders said at the time they would explore hosting a similar festival at another location. “I will tell you I personally feel we have done our due diligence,” Mrkvicka told council members last week. “We have made our best effort to try and come to the table for an agreement, understanding that we do not completely agree with everything you’re asking us to do.“

Prokop has said the city is not in the event business and that he hoped an agreement could be reached.

“I would hope we can somehow get this year behind us and build a relationship with what both of us should be doing,” he said.

In a city Facebook post last week, Prokop said city and chamber officials met a dozen times over the course of more than a year, and that he thought the relationship was improving before the city was served notice of the possible lawsuit.

During talks about the future of the festivals and Main Street last year, City Council member and downtown business owner Nan Sutton said “a lot of this is personal,” meeting minutes show.

An exchange in those minutes offers an example:

“Mr. Mrkvicka said the Chamber’s ‘strongest desire is to be a partner’ with the city;

Councilman (Stephen) Murray said, ‘You guys sometimes sure have a funny way of showing it.’

Mr. Mrkvicka said he’d ‘echo that same sentiment back’ at the city. The Chamber is ‘trying to do everything we can to make this a healthy relationship.’”

Since the vote this month, each side has taken another shot.

In his letter, Mrkvicka questioned whether the city set a precedent to take over other events and a share of their profits to boost city coffers. He wrote that “government overreach” experienced by the chamber could have a chilling effect on business.

Prokop questioned why the trade names were so important to the chamber, asking whether its leaders planned to move the festival or sell it as an asset of Main Street.

The chamber is hosting a previously planned open forum at Technical College of the Lowcountry auditorium at 5:30 p.m. July 24 to hear from the public and business owners about issues they feel are important in the upcoming year.

What remains unanswered is whether two entities that ideally would work together to improve public life in the city can manage to do so.

This story was originally published July 18, 2018 at 4:41 PM.