The 'Stars and Thunder' Festival is facing some unexpected costs which led to a $600,000 increased ask from local taxpayers. This week Mayor Steve Black gave an update on the state of the festival's finances, which showed the current projected cost to the city is up to $4.1 million dollars.
He told TimminsToday the reasons for the upswing.
"I think when you look at the original draft budget that was presented, it was very high level big items. At that point in time, the entertainment value was $1.75 million dollars in the budget. When we confirmed our lineup and got all the artists we wanted, brought that back to council for approval, that was $2.1 million dollars. Council approved it at that time. So that was $350,000 dollars of the $600,000 dollar increase right there, due to the entertainment that we brought in," said Black.
The other item that caught organizers off guard was portable toilets.
"We have 300 portable toilets coming in for this event. I'm hoping no one complains about access to washrooms by the end of this, because that's quite a substantial number. But that's what the charts indicate that we should bring in for an event of this size, if it does sell out," he said.
Black said the number caught them off guard because they based their budget off of toilet data from the Great Canadian Kayak Challenge.
"Expanding it for the number of days and number of hours that it is. But the fact is, for the kayak festival, they have that supply of toilets in town. So its very easy to supply, low cost. For this festival, they need to truck them all in from other locations, and there's a significant cost to trucking that amount of portable toilets into Timmins," he said.
He said they've met with the suppliers and have seen quotations.
"I'm not worried about what they're saying the cost is, because I've seen the quotes from the other companies that are supplying the toilets with them. That's the cost of doing business, and something that caught us off guard. Not knowing that we would have to bring in all those toilets in from locations around the province," said Black.
He said the other variations in the budget include 'detailed planning', site prep, and legal expenses, which he admits was budgeted low. He anticipated they will come in at around $65,000, mostly due to contract amendments.
Mayor Steve Black says there will be 300 portable toilets on site for Stars and Thunder, which promoters say will draw upwards of 25,000 people to Hollinger Park"Obviously, having the city never put on an event of this nature, we wanted to bounce the contracts off our lawyers, and entertainment lawyers, to ensure that we had ourselves covered, and that they were structured the way they should be from our point of view. So that was a slightly higher cost."
"I'm still very optimistic. We have $1.8 million left to go to break even. We still have to hear on a number of grants. We still have sponsors that we anticipate bringing in.
"If you look at where the festival started at the outset, when people told us this is a risk to taxpayers dollars, at that point in time it was a $3.545 million risk. we're down to a $1.8 million dollar risk, and I'm planning by July 1st when all is said and done, that it will be at no risk to the taxpayers, and that we'll have broke even, or made a little bit of money on the event," said Black.
After the successful applicants were recently announced for the Ontario 150 Celebration Program, the Mayor of North Bay Al McDonald was less than impressed that his city was largely shut out of funding. Black revealed that Timmins has also experienced a few setbacks in that regard.
"We were disappointed when we got turned down for the first two of the six grants we applied to, but they were two of the smaller grants. We have had some follow up discussions on a couple of the larger grants, and we're hopeful that we will still obtain one of those two grants, or both those grants, to help make this festival break even. But at the end of the day its the province's call to decide where they should partner. I don't think you'll find a community in Canada that is putting on a 150 celebration similar to ours. Obviously Ottawa will have a very big Canada Day celebration, as they do every year. This being the 150th, it will probably be even larger," he said.
Black has his fingers crossed for some government bucks.
"I'll be very disappointed if the province doesn't come in as a partner in some regard, given what we've done to step up and provide celebrations in line with the Ontario 150 and Canada 150," he said.
Black's report states that $100,000 in funds from sponsors is confirmed, and that ticket sales have reached $2.87 million dollars.
