2009 Heritage Fest reports

Good news in 2009.

Update- I kludged an upload of the complete 2009 Heritage Fest Annual Report, available after the break.

From page 5 Heritage Fest 2009 Economic Impact Study

Heritage Fest Annual Report 2009

If you figure how it’s been figured for the last 28 years, Heritage Fest 2009 generated positive cash flow as the report indicates.  Using the CED staff payroll apportionment that council employed this year during budget talks, it lost money.  The file is not machine readable so I had to down-rez and split it to get it under the 2MB limit.

Click here or on the cover image to view the first half of the report.  It contains the Table of Contents, the Executive Summary, and the narrative.  This file loads slowly, so please be patient.

Click here or on the page above to view part 2, the financial report, which includes the band list.  This file loads fairly slow, so please be patient.

Highights:

Click on cover for complete report.

Heitage Fest 2009 Economic Impact Study

This is where the talk of $40,000 in local sales tax generated from $2,291,111 in economic activity from non-local attendees comes from.  The economic report that estimates $5,212,661 in total economic activity generated by this event as a community economic benefit to DG businesses.  If the report is correct that business translates into $90,242.52 in local sales tax receipts.  Again I think the file is simply too large because it is not a readable .pdf. I got this crammed down small enough to use.  Click here or on cover for the complete report.

Resident Jack Ebersold, one of 4,800 4,985 Facebook group members, attended the CEC meeting Tuesday at 4pm and reported this:

The CEC meeting, in my opinion was very optimistic and there were a lot of good ideas and opinions tosses around. I want to retract the things i said a few days ago about the council members. Now that I clearly see that they are being proactive about the problem I know that they are some of the best for the job. I can tell that none of them wanted to make the hard decision of not only canceling HF but laying off many workers. Peoples lives will be affected more this year by the budget then having one less think to do the last week of June. So please try not to share negative thoughts on this site. If you are not part of the solution, then you are part of the problem! NOW LETS BRING BACK THE 2010 HF!!!!! Feel free to comment and ideas on how to publicly fund HF this year or express your favorite part of HF. The board mems. are part of this group and WILL take your suggestions seriously!

The two DGS teens who began the Facebook group Bring back the 2010 Downers Grove Heritage Fest! also attended the meeting.  Well done ladies!

So me and (the other organizer, both who are minors) attended the CEC meeting today. Very interesting things were said and this makes us want to do lots more than we are already doing to bring back this fest. We know that it was not an easy descision for the council to cancel this fest and now we have even more respect (additional to the tons of respect… we already had) for the council. They are willing to work with us to fundraise and get the public even more involved. So please people, help us with ideas to fundraise and to get even more of the public involved. We want to start fundraising very soon and we need volunteers! So come on people, let’s work together and get our fest back!

Jack, thank you for the report (note: I ran the spell checker on a couple words and changed one word “NO” to” NOW” which JE indicated was his intention). Thank you girls for your report and efforts on the massive Facebook organizing.

Most of the $168,000 (still a moving target) is/was staff costs of the Community Events Department. i.e organizing, coordinating, securing supporters/donors, executing contracts and keeping the books.  How much of that can be managed via volunteers and civic groups remains to be seen and is critical to success.  Everyone needs to pitch in:

…if the Rotary, the Moose, the Lions Club, the Kiwanis and/or others can step-up and run and fund HF in 2010, that’s a great thing and an example of the community pulling together to plan and run an event deemed worthy by many. I promise I’ll do what I can to help make that happen in 2010. And I assume all people of good will here will do the same.

That was Mayor Sandack posting up an Open Letter.  Right on Ron!  Although he was emphatic he was speaking for himself and only himself, Sandack is willing to help out.  Who else on council might be willing?

Considering what has been discussed since the village suspended it’s participation in late November is a smaller scale festival, this is all very encouraging.