Transmenu powered by JoomlArt.com - Mambo Joomla Professional Templates Club

Give The Seafood Fest A Rest

Are you ready for a Seafood Festival at the Safety Harbor Marina? Don’t start salivating for seafood quite yet. The public is about to be introduced to the consequences of the chamber of commerce fighting city hall. The 2007 Seafood Festival — aka Harbor Sounds Music Festival — may be a bust. It has become the focal point of a tug of war that has been going on for about two years and now is in a stalemate that doesn’t leave either side looking good. The Safety Harbor City Commission is determined to make its point that the chamber must disclose its finances before receiving any further direct or indirect public financing. But at this late date, the city is unlikely to find a professional organization able to produce the high quality show it is demanding and still put it on in March 2007.

After twice inviting proposals for staging the event, the city commission twice rejected the chamber before selecting a Tampa-based firm with a glamorous reputation in public relations, but no apparent experience in seafood festivals. Not too surprisingly, three weeks after being selected, Brock Communications contacted city hall to say it would be “unable to perform” and was withdrawing its application. At the soonest, it will be mid-November before the city can decide on its next step.

The Seafood Festival is the victim, but this battle is raising a host of new questions. Many elected city officials feel an obligation to promote local events that will educate and entertain the local citizenry, from events at the library to musicians in the parks. However, things get complicated as events get bigger. Should the city be obligated to rent out Main Street or the marina so non-profit groups can raise money? Who should benefit? How often should that occur? When do events no longer serve local citizens, but just become major moneymakers? Is that what the citizens want?

In fact the more than decade-old Seafood Festival, which the chamber has operated the past few years as Harbor Sounds, has grown to a point that it draws thousands of people from outside the community and generates tens of thousands of dollars in profit — supposedly. And that is exactly why the city commission began asking, just how much money does a festival like this make and why do we not know how that money is being spent?

The chamber’s short answer was “none of your business.” That stonewalling succeeded for a time, but became an irritant that commissioners found completely unacceptable. After all, the city in recent years has directly and indirectly contributed tens of thousands of dollars to the local chamber as a sponsor of its events and through direct subsidy of the reconstruction of its offices in a historic building on Main Street. Unfortunately, as that battle has dragged on, time has expired to properly plan what has become a popular annual event.

Given the short amount of time, the many questions and the enormity of producing an event like the Seafood Festival, the only answer for this year is to give it a rest. Maybe by 2008 these issues can be resolved.