Excitement and support over a new version of Bradford’s event strategy has replaced councillors’ prior hesitation.
Based on a report from Terry Foran, director of recreation and cultural services, committee of the whole recommended council endorse the strategy and use it as a guide during annual budget deliberations, during the regular council meeting Tuesday.
It wasn’t just council showing support, though, with resident Earl Galaski praising the idea during open forum.
“It’s a great opportunity to be able to revitalize events in town, both new and old,” he said.
The strategy was developed with the help of Expedition Management Consulting Ltd. and outlines how the town intends to deliver community events like Carrot Fest and Canada Day over the next decade.
While the town has a “nice portfolio” of its own community events, Foran explained there are other groups looking for assistance in bringing their own public events to town.
“We want to be a facilitator of that,” he said, and used Caribana as an example of a large-scale event town staff could help an independent group set up and run.
Exactly which groups might take advantage of the opportunity is hard to predict, according to Foran.
“You have to put your feet in the water to find out if it’s cold or hot,” he said. “We have to be open to the ideas if we want to see greater involvement of our community to participate with us.”
While most sections of the strategy remain largely unchanged from when it was last presented to council on June 4 — save for new notes to add context and clarity — members were far more supportive thanks to explanations Foran provided directly to councillors in the meantime.
“I’m very happy with the results of the questions you provided answers to,” Mayor James Leduc said. “I’m 100 per cent in favour of this now.”
After the meeting, Foran summarized his correspondence with council in which he helped clarify various aspects of the strategy, including staffing impacts, comparisons with similar programs in other communities, financial investments, organizational realignments, managing rising costs, and clarifying third-party delivery.
Most importantly, Foran said endorsing the strategy doesn’t mean approving each recommendation, which will be given their own consideration during each annual budget process to allow for modifications or changes as needed based on town finances and the needs of the community.
That was of particular importance to Ward 5 Coun. Peter Ferragine, who praised staff for doing a “tremendous job” delivering community events, but anticipates requests for more as the community continues to grow.
“It’s all going to come down to the funding in the budget,” he said during the meeting. “Everybody wants more events and more to do, but nobody wants more on their tax bill.”
Ward 4 Coun. Joseph Giordano confirmed the two messages he hears most from residents about events is that they “love” them and want more, and said he’s “super excited” about the possibility of groups partnering with the town.
“We can’t rely on staff to do everything all of the time for everyone; it’s just not feasible,” he said.
That was one of the key reasons to create the strategy in the first place, which is intended to address an organizational structure that “is not sufficient” to handle rising costs and increased expectations for community programming that have come with “rapid population growth,” coupled with “unclear roles” for staff and a lack of resources and strategic planning, according to the strategy.
To help resolve those issues, the strategy focuses on six updated goals:
- Increase human resources — Recommends the town initially hire a full-time event programmer/facilitator, with other potential future hires including an event marketing and revenue generation specialist, an administrative assistant for events, and direct programming staff as needed.
- Encourage third-party delivery — Recommends the town share the responsibility for event delivery with community organizations.
- Evaluate in which events the town will invest — Determine whether each event is meeting the strategy’s intended outcomes, and reduce, remove or expand programming based on needs the core outcomes identified in the strategy.
- Increase municipal investment in event production — Suggests the town consider increasing annual investment in events in order to keep pace with rising costs.
- Increase event revenues — Suggests the town consider increasing admissions, vending commissions and more to generate more revenue from events.
- Improve evaluation processes — Recommends the town maintain ongoing evaluations of the return on investment of community events, including from social, economic, and environmental perspectives.
Recommendations from committee of the whole are considered for approval at the next regular council meeting.
