The Editor,
The Estevan and District Music Festival received a letter this past week with a notice saying the City of Estevan will be discontinuing a scholarship to the festival worth $200. The letter ended with the following statement:
Although council is sympathetic to the cause they feel they must maintain a fiscal responsibility to reduce the existing debt load. Please remove the City of Estevan from the 2016 and subsequent mailing list for sponsorship.
As a long-standing member of the volunteer Music Festival committee, I can assure you, our organization is only looking for minimal support from the City of Estevan for an event that has only benefited them.
The Estevan and District Music Festival is a non-profit organization run by unpaid volunteers (taxpayers) and serves not only our city, but also the surrounding district. For 51 years, our festival has provided our community an opportunity to participate, perform and compete in several different music disciplines. Our participants include community groups, schools and individuals, not exclusive to age, race, gender, ability or financial status.
Besides the added activity revenue created by the actual event itself, we host and welcome to our city at least four professionals each year who educate, teach and adjudicate our students while spending time and money in our community.
Our organization functions entirely on volunteers, entry fees, door admission, program sales as well as generous donations from our business community and individual taxpayers. We are in the top five of 48 festivals in our province for entries (over 3,500 in the past five years) and scholarships given back to the participants (over $10,000 a year). We have never run a deficit.
Besides the annual festival, we host other events. Just last week, the Saskatchewan Music Festival Association provided our city with a Speech Arts Workshop. Over 350 students from all six elementary schools participated in this workshop. This was provided at no cost to our schools, our taxpayers or the City of Estevan.
We do not receive any funding from the City of Estevan for operations, venues, clinicians, teachers, volunteers, or organizers. Nor do we ‘cost’ the city any money on supplements for rental charges, forgiveness of taxes, transportation costs, door prizes or grants.
The only thing our organization has requested from the City of Estevan is to be represented by providing a small token of support each year in the form of a scholarship. As of 2016, this will be removed.
After reaching the article, ‘Council debates future of summer ice’ in last week’s Mercury, the City’s cost for one day of summer ice would surpass the total monetary support the Estevan and District Music Festival has received in its 51-year history.
If the City of Estevan is looking to reduce the ‘debt’ and be ‘fiscally responsible’ by cutting back on support to organizations such as ours, they are in much deeper trouble than it appears on the surface.
Perhaps they need to go back to the drawing board and reevaluate.
Sincerely,
Anita Kuntz – Entry Secretary, Past President, Estevan and District Music Festival
