THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, February 10, 1995 TAG: 9502090220
SECTION: VIRGINIA BEACH BEACON PAGE: 06 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Editorial
LENGTH: Medium: 65 lines
On Tuesday City Council approved $10,500 to Virginia Beach Events Unlimited, the non-profit firm that produces the Neptune Festival, as the city's already budgeted contribution to the Festival. Council also approved an unbudgeted $35,000 more, a contribution that Festival doyenne and VBEU President Nancy Creech had told a reporter last week the Festival could manage without. So why contribute it?
Council unanimously found reasons enough: to bolster the corporate sponsorships that accounted for some 38 percent of Festival revenue last year, and to reassure the volunteers on whom the Festival so greatly depends. Both seemed imperiled when Council seconded city staff's decision to deny VBEU the city's near-million-dollar contract for resort entertainment and special events.
Following December's award of the events contract to Cellar Door - and subsequent layoffs at VBEU - VBEU President Creech told this newspaper that the staff cuts and the loss of profits resulting from the loss of the city contract would make covering the costs of the Festival extremely difficult and ``eliminate the opportunity to earn the money to help support the organization.'' Others' warnings about the impact were even more dire. But why?
The city's initial cash contribution to Festival '94 was a small percentage of the more than $180,000 in sponsorship revenue VBEU raised toward $400,000-plus in Festival expenses. And how could VBEU have anticipated profits from the 1994 events contract to put toward the Festival? For lack of funds, VBEU had canceled contracted weekend events in September 1994. In early December, City Council covered a shortfall of $70,000 or so VBEU had incurred in producing the American Music Festival over the Labor Day weekend.
VBEU officials note that Council's decision to make up that shortfall came not at VBEU's request but at Council's discretion. It superseded an earlier agreement between the city and VBEU that any shortfall from 1994 would be made up from city funds disbursed under the 1995 events contract. And it forestalled what could have become an issue of who, city or VBEU, should cover that shortfall and when.
But another issue arises: whether any ``profits'' from the city events contract could properly have gone to VBEU, a non-profit corporation, for the Neptune Festival. City Council, Mayor Oberndorf said last week, ``always thought that the Neptune Festival stood alone'' but that was ``not entirely'' the case. Yet, according to the contract between the city and VBEU approved in March 1994, VBEU was to keep its Neptune Festival functions and funding separate from the city-contracted summer entertainment and special events programs. That kind of confusion about accounting and accountability, coupled with a clear profit motive and direct profit to the city from (for-profit) Cellar Door's bid, helped to deny VBEU this year's events contract.
Unfortunately, some Neptune Festival volunteers and VBEU supporters saw in that denial the city's ingratitude for their 21 years of volunteerism seminal to the Festival's success. Though the city's contributions had been declining and were scheduled to end this year, Council has long put city money behind Neptune volunteers' tremendous investment of time and energy, an investment that yields tangible returns for the city, too.
As Councilman Baum put it Tuesday, the city's $35,000 sponsorship is a way to heal their wound. If so, that's reason enough. by CNB