With early reports on the Stars and Thunder financials pegging the shortfall at $1.89 million, Timmins Mayor Steve Black has taken to social media to say he hopes it can continue.
A spreadsheet at this week’s council meeting broke down the preliminary numbers for the eight-day music festival and international fireworks competition held at Hollinger Park.
While there wasn’t a lot of debate on the topic at the meeting, the day after the council meeting, Black took to Facebook to talk about how the festival impacts the quality of life, economy and tourism.
“This year we seen 2,393 tickets of the 10,000 total bought from people out of town. This does not include anyone living in Timmins who bought tickets for out of town guests or anyone from out of town that bought tickets at the festival box office on site,” he wrote.
“449 tickets were bought from outside the province of Ontario including purchases in 4 other countries, 17 states in the U.S. and 8 other provinces in Canada.
Last year a third party estimated the economic spin off of visitors to the community at $10.9 million.”
The budget for the second edition of the festival that ran from June 24 to July 1 at Hollinger Park was $5.725 million.
So far, the committed revenues — which according to staff is the best estimate of where the city will be when everything is in — are $2.6 million, with the expenses coming in at $4.5 million.
Staff is still waiting for items such as alcohol revenue and expenses, wages for June 30 and July 1, volunteer food cost, and other miscellaneous items, to include in the final numbers, which are expected later this summer.
Of the 10,000 tickets sold, about half were eight-day passes in the general admission and VIP areas, with the other half being single-day tickets.
Black noted on Facebook that the festival showcases the community and helps with recruitment.
“Major employers have indicated their support and what it means to them, their employees and the community. This morning at a meeting at one of our local hotels the general manager indicated the week of the festival has been his strongest week over the entire year,” he wrote.
“The event came at a cost and we should try to reduce that impact but I still firmly believe the pros outweigh the costs. The average cost if you applied it equally over all tax bills would be $90 per tax bill. For residents less as the commercial and industrial sectors would eat up a larger portion.”
Similar to last week’s Facebook post, when Black revealed what the estimated deficit would be, he noted the services the city provides that cost money to run but aren’t used by everyone. This time, however, he included the dollar figures for 2018.
According to Black, arenas and pool cost $1,777,740 per year, the library costs $1,703,670, the museum costs $551,920, parks/playgrounds and beaches cost $1,763,740 and transit costs $3,851,100.
“Yes a festival is different as each of the above is different from each other as well. However not every community has a museum, 5 arenas, or transit. We choose to because we find it valuable to the community and important to the overall quality of life. I believe Stars and Thunder has become an important part of that quality of life and tourism attraction to Timmins and hope it can continue,” he wrote.
At this week’s council meeting, Joe Campbell and Rick Dubeau were the only councillors to weigh in on the report.
Campbell argued that regardless of where the money comes from to cover the festival’s financial shortfall, “the city will be “short that amount of money.”
“This event lost money in 2017, we didn’t even have a final financial statement before we forged ahead with it and I’ll tell you why, egos got in the way of solid financial management on this thing, big time,” Campbell told council.
You can read Black's full post on Facebook here:
The preliminary breakdown of the 2018 Stars and Thunder financials are available here.
