By Eric Stern
December 4th, 2024
BURLINGTON, ON
The Burlington Residents’ Action Group (BRAG) learned very quickly that if you put six people in a room and ask a question you’ll get six different answers. Worse still, five of those answers won’t agree with mine.
Our goal is to represent the community and one way to do that is through surveys. I know that the GetInvolved Burlington website also does this. I’ve found the city surveys to be long on questions and short on important details like costs. We’ve tried to keep our surveys short and quick. Results are/will be posted on the BRAG website and, when possible, shared with our council.
“Pausing” the Sound of Music Festival (SOM) hit me as a major decision with impacts on the entire city. The city shared a meeting agenda on Wednesday or Thursday before a meeting the following Monday (December 2, 2024).
We put together our survey before the Burlington Gazette reported that the $95,000 unpaid debt the SOM Festival has is to the city in the form of unpaid invoices. I read this to mean that when city staff perform a service for the festival the city invoices the festival. This is a reasonable business practice but also very different than a $95,000 bank loan with unpaid interest piling up. I updated the survey on Tuesday, December 3rd, 2024 to include this new information.
You can read/fill out the survey here: https://forms.gle/ymB2zc7vW2HLiYmg7
Here are the results of the survey
- 1% want to have a temporary pause meaning no SOM in 2025.
- 25% of people clearly choose the option to scale down SOM.
- 5% of people clearly want SOM to continue without changes.
This means 62.5% of respondents want to see some form of the Sound of Music Festival in 2025.
Fourteen people did not choose one of the three options and instead commented.
Here are the comments.
| Why is every option allowing SOM to not pay back the money council gave them? None of the above. Pay the money back with interest and no more SOM festivals unless they SOM can fund them themselves. |
| SoM repay all money owed and cancel any further grants if that’s how they run their business |
| Remove all funding until they can prove to run without it. |
| Have SOM pay back everything owed over longer timescale, host smaller event. |
| The time has come to realize that big is not best and if they cannot be self sustaining then its time to mothball the Sound of Music Festival |
| Fold it |
| Option 3 with added stipulation that no further deficits are allowed from 2025 onward. All spending must have proven and defined funding. |
| Gated Access. $5.00 per adult entrant |
| Going to need a better breakdown of their budget for 2025 before making a decision. Seems way too vague. |
| The Sound of Music must not be cancelled. Period. Work out something to please the majority, but it is too much of a good thing to be cancelled even for one year. |
| More of a business versus more something-for-nothing approach would be a good start. |
| No further SOM until amount owing + interest is paid in full & future festivals have a feasibility study |
| No forgiveness and no grant |
| SoM has seen better days… |
Knowing that the $95,000 debt is internal money and not a loan from a bank may have changed the results.
Many people added comments:
| How much profit does local businesses make the weekend of Sound of Music? |
| Sound of music is at the heart of what Burlington is. We should be striving for more events, not less. |
| You guys are spending $40 MILLION on a single ice rink at the Skyway Community Center! How much is that place going to cost to operate? Including debt it must be at least $4M a year. Or if the ice is used 1000 hours a year, $4000 an hour (even including an hourly rental fee of $500 doesn’t help the math).
But $90K is too much to maintain a cultural institution? Lets be real, the Sound of Music is significantly more valuable to the City of Burlington than a single ice rink. |
| Money needed for more important things! |
| If Sound of Music is loosing money, Taxpayers should not have to pay for it period. Most people who attend this event are from our of town and do not have to pay for operations or expenses. |
| Spend more money on it not less, the bigger talent brings more people. The talent has sucked. Also consider all the money the small businesses downtown lose out on if you don’t run it. Option 2 is a slap in the face to the entire city. |
| How did the festival go from a multi million dollar festival to hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt. Sounds like mismanagement and the board should be held accountable for repaying tax payers money! |
| I felt for a while the weekend was getting too big and unfocused. Return more to its roots. Close less of Brant St. |
| There is no such thing as a free anything. Over the past few years the SOM has cost the taxpayer money. This taxpayer money could be better spent. Time to move on – times change and people are not prepared to come and pay to attend this festival. |
| SOM should continue annually including 2025. It should be affordable to all entrants with a $5.00 entrance fee plus a Food Bank item per adult. There should also be a Seniors VIP Event as in a previous year! Seniors would gladly pay an additional entrance fee featuring Burlington restaurants food and paid alcoholic beverages. |
| The festival needs to be reimaged and refocused on not being a headline festival, but back to a community event. |
| This Festival is an Icon of Burlington Heritage….surely the city has pet projects of lessor stature that could be reduced. |
| SOM should charge admission imho.It has been sold as a tourism draw without any hard evidence.Most come from Burlington and nearby towns. I would also like to see the RibFest moved out of our park. |
| I enjoy downtown more when it’s not crowded with garbage all over. I’d prefer money to go to improving the city and services within it. |
| Option 3 costs taxpayers the least of all options, but why can’t that option also include “”Going forward, all future grants would be contingent upon the establishment of a detailed service level agreement, incorporating principles from the recently endorsed Accountability Framework, to ensure clear expectations and accountability moving forward.” |
| 2024 sound of music was a disaster. Poor choice of artists and little reason to attend otherwise. AIM the music for the 25-40 year old range and I bet you would get a much better turn out. If the the sound of music continues to cater to the 50+ range I don’t see it making money. The budget for 2025 is so vague I don’t see how I could make an informed decision. |
| Looks like it’s time for a scaled back version of SOM. Perhaps less days, 2 maybe. |
| Why are you debating spending $250k on a festival so many people attend when there are so many other options to save money? |
| Love SOM but seems like more financial discipline is required vs losses experienced in 2024 despite record attendance. BOD sounds to be on right track but needs to deliver their promise |
| Maybe if SOM invested in more popular main events for youth instead of older canadian rock artists we would get a better turnout and more revenue? |
| Hopefully you will scale down or eliminate other unnecessary happenings in Burlington. All these events are nice to have however we need to tighten our belts as households are having a tough time managing finances. |
| COB needs to pick a lane or get out of the way. What is the value proposition of the S.O.M.? The SOM’s value proposition being the sum total of the full mix of benefits or economic value that it need to deliver to the current and future customers/patrons (not COB) who will buy (versus get for free) the products (merchandise) and/or services (music and atmosphere in this case). S.O.M. is somewhat of a brand, but they need an overall marketing strategy |
| We need to make this thing work. This is a huge draw for the core, and a point of pride for the city. Cut elsewhere to find the money to support this event short term, plan to make it self sufficient in the future (bigger sponsorship deals, higher vendor fees, solicit donations throughout the weekend and at the parade.) |
| Please don’t cancel the festival. It’s one of the things that keeps me proud of this city |
| The loss of revenue to the businesses in Burlington if the event was cancelled would be devastating. As well as the loss of community to all those that attend. |
| There is a huge cost local businesses by cancelling and it will be hard to bring it back |
| – reduce the grant for next year from $150,000 to $105,000 and use the $40K to pay down the $125,000 loan
150000-105000 is 45 000 Where’d did that 5000 go? |
| Why is the city making so many new hires |
| My favourite event of the year, please don’t cancel! |
| Sound of Music is very valuable to the community, but has grown to the point it is too large for the location and the organizers are not able to control the cost structure. Scaling back the number of stages and performers, while still keeping the overall ethos and retaining all of the core revenue-generating activities would be advisable to keep this festival sustainable without depending on additional funding from taxpayers. It really should be making money for local charities. Need to increase the margins on food, drink & merch. |
| We love sound of music and look forward to it yearly |
| Charge a nominal admission to recover costs and prevent future losses. |
| Personally, I think the major change occurred when the professional hired staff came onboard a number of years back. They instituted the paid/ticketed prefest the week or two before. The purpose was to help raise funds for the larger 4 day event in the middle of June. So what went wrong? Was this not the fund raising success that it was touted to be? (It would of costs of its own to stage)
What was the cause of the riff or major falling out between the strong, loyal and hard working corps of volunteers and this hired paid for staff? The atmosphere of the festival really has changed… it used to have a real family feel to it. Then it changed… really skewing to a younger aged crowd, and forgetting the older demographic. |
| pay the loans back No forgiveness [period |
| Scale it down for sure. Getting too big for the venues and the parking/traffic. Also need to charge an admission fee to all. The days of a “free” SOM are over. |
| If they can’t make a profit in 2025, then cancel future years. |
| Don’t cancel the event.. So many people enjoy that event. |
| The benefit to the city overall is much greater than the small costs presented here. Hotels, restaurants, AirBnB’s, local vendors, residents, employees, and volunteers all benefit from this fantastic event. We have attended for years and attend every day if we can. 3 days out of 4 this past year. Very well run. We are VERY lucky to have this event in Burlington. |
“This means 62.5% of respondents want to see some form of the Sound of Music Festival in 2025”
Or does it mean that the survey was flawed, not allowing participants to fully express their opinions other than in comments, as there was no option to vote for not allowing SOM to reneg on the loan council gave them?
The survey uses the three options presented to council by city staff. The document staff prepared for the December 2nd council meeting is here:
https://burlingtonpublishing.escribemeetings.com/filestream.ashx?DocumentId=83186
The survey does include an “Other:” option with the ability to add a comment and the comments are included in the article (above) right under the chart.
The survey may be flawed. We didn’t notice this item was on the council agenda or that the agenda had been posted to the website until November 28th. Consequently, the survey was put together very quickly.
In my opinion, a major decision regarding an iconic festival should have had more public input. The innocuous-sounding “pause” option may cause the corporate sponsors to move their funding to other events, leading to a more permanent pause.
Council ended up delaying any decision on SoM pending a possible donation from a “White Knight”. The survey is still open in case this pops up again in a future council meeting.