BURLINGTON, ON March 20, 2012 For a short period of time the Sound of Music Festival was a contender for the $17,000 they had said they needed to make their 2012 program solid. Dave Miller the Executive Director of an organization that believes it has a $4 million economic impact on the city, appeared before city council pleading for funds he felt the Sound of Music Festival needed. Miller had done something few people manage to pull off – and that was appear at an early budget committee meeting; at the final budget committee meeting and last night at the meeting where the budget gets cast in stone. It was all for not.
To add insult to injury Miller learned earlier in the day that the SOM was not going to have access to the East Lawn of Spencer Smith Park – the space was going to be needed by the crew completing the construction of the Pier, which according to Miller would significantly impact programming for the 2012 event.
The Festival was having a string of bad luck and the hope was that it would not extend into the summer program that has been listed for the 12th time in a row as one of the top 50 events in Ontario.
The SOM people have had some difficulty dealing with city hall which is something they are working on improving. At their first meeting with the city’s budget cycle they were almost booed off the stage and the question asked was: When is enough, enough. City council didn’t think the Festival should get any bigger and they certainly didn’t want to give them any money.
The Festival does have a reserve of $400,000 which Councillor Taylor thinks they should dip into. While the word reserve is used to describe the funds – they are really operating cash needed to cover day to day expenses during the Festival. And for anyone who knows anything about the show business – it can get a little hairy when weather turns bad, crowds don’t show up, revenue looks like the water going down the toilet. That’s just about the time that expenses begin to get out of hand as well.
The Festival has learned to keep a really good chunk of money in the bank for those rainy days. While we are usually very tough on people who want to keep things confidential –we believe that if you want public money you open the kimono – we went along with SOM keeping their financial statements confidential. Last year was apparently not a good year financially however previous years have been financially strong.
Council didn’t seem to be able to pick up on what the Festival does for the city financially and they seemed to miss the point completely about the growth potential. Councillors Meed Ward and Dennison were onside for a one time grant of $17,000 but the others wanted to wait until there was a fully fleshed out business case which everyone expects city hall staff to have a hand in putting together.
And that for the Sound of Music Festival people is part of the problem – they don’t particularly want the city to have its hands in the SOM pockets.
Expect the SOM people to pull back into a huddle while they figure out how they are going to deal with this new reality. Better if they could snag that broadcasting contract and steer clear of the city hall crowd.