Enjoy and support Wildflower! Arts and Music Festival in Richardson, Texas, this weekend. Information is found at http://www.wildflowerfestival.com/ .
Some of my personal thoughts and opinions on it as a tax payer.
A tremendous amount of conscientious hard work goes into putting on Wildflower! Arts and Music Festival by non-concert type City staff, volunteers, performers, a lot of wonderful people, paid and unpaid. Wildflower offers many benefits to the community from good will, advertising, business, social and neighborhood networking, volunteering and learning opportunities, charitable fundraising to, what else, Entertainment.
Like other entertainment events, it has gone from a small low budget affair (in a park, sometimes muddy) all the way to a large high budget anticipated event in cool digs 'n surroundings, albeit still not immune to the attendance dampening effect of rain (that puts risk in the musical sounding phrase, break ing eve n).
I feel however that certain aspects are disconcerting from a tax payer's perspective.
One example is that a LOT of hotel rooms, in addition to the suites, have started being booked up in town by the City of Richardson during Wildflower and people are getting them courtesy of the City who are not legitimately in need or due them, when tax payer resources should not be used up for that. Resources and credit need to be applied in a wiser way. What guidelines there are, are too loose, and they are not equitable, and there's no one checking who isn't involved. There is most certainly legitimate usage, and then some.
Another problem is when customers of a hotel who have reservations are bumped. I was at one hotel in line behind other customers and the hotelier told them the rooms they had booked in advance were now let out to the City and that they were bumped. The customers were upset at being bumped from the rooms they had reserved. Whether through lack of planning or whatever, this is not a good way to operate.
A LOT of staff time is spent on the event during the entire year and it has been in some instances at the expense of other needs while city staff is occupied acting as manager, developer, promoter, and workerbee for Wildflower.
There is also a lot of expectation on employees to volunteer time, some beg to do it, and most are happy to do it, within reason.
While not all of the large number of courtesy VIP entrance and drink passes that are handed out or mailed out from the City Manager's Office are redeemed, it would save tax payer resources if the number were reduced or eliminated for the non paying guests. Tax payers should not be made to accommodate for other people's free alcohol consumption. If you ask them, they would probably be just fine to pay for their own drinks and tickets and not take away from tax payer resources if they knew people knew about it.
Don't get me wrong, I appreciate Wildflower and some of the staff are so good at what they do with Wildflower, they are professionals at this stage of festival promotion because of all their intelligence, practice and budget given to it over the years and it keeps them working hard year round while having fun sometimes. I think not all the resources are put into the City coffer that legitimately should be but are instead spent as unnecessary expenses and perks for non workers, non performers, non sponsors and non paying people, and for hotel rooms and alcoholic beverages and food expense for non essential, non justifiable reasons. If non eligible people want all that, they need to buy a Wildflower! Friends of the Festival ticket package or sponsorship package.
Anything can apparently be justified, but it would be good to see the City cut hotel and alcohol tariffs on Wildflower. Keeping the spending evenhanded and under control is the right thing to do. Several have suggested comparing the full costs and benefits of the inhouse management of Wildflower to an outside commercial business running it.
There are many needs in this City outside of the three day festival and its goodness, that are not as costly and consuming but just as important, and the tax rate is being raised as it stands, unfortunately. Wildflower could have long ago been a greater self supporting event with funds to spare to help pay, for instance, on the large city committed Eisemann Center debt (instead of having had to dip into the road maintenance money for many years until recently to service the Eisemann Center debt, taking away from road maintenance, some of which is now pushed into the 2010 bond package). That is just one example.
