The person who covers Ypsi for AnnArbor.com is a guy by the name of Tom Perkins, and he’s been stirring up quite a bit of shit lately. In this past week, he’s broken stories on both the crumbling of Dave Curtis’s Washington Street empire and the decision by the Depot Town CDC to end their affiliation with Elvisfest. If you haven’t read them, and the comments which follow, you really should. It’s fun stuff. I’ve particularly enjoyed the latter article, which includes several pieces of financial data that CDC head Erik Dotzauer and board member Merrill Guerra are contesting. Here’s part of the article that’s being disputed:
…The future of the annual festival in Ypsilanti’s Riverside Park is in question after the corporation that oversaw its finances recently opted to stop funding the event. But that group, the non-profit Depot Town Community Development Corporation, is keeping approximately $44,000 that was in the Elvisfest’s bank account….
…The largest CDC fundraising initiative was launching the Michigan Roots Jamboree two years ago. According to Depot Town Association financial records, the rock and bluegrass festival lost $6,000 in 2010 — it brought in $42,200 but cost $48,000. Dotzauer said the financial statement doesn’t include some sponsorship money the Jamboree has yet to receive, and he estimates the event turned a profit and made more than the Elvisfest.
The financial statements listed the Elvisfest expenses at $72,000 and revenue at $78,000.
Dotzauer said the CDC chose to cancel the Elvisfest instead of the Roots Jamboree, despite the $12,000 difference in revenue, because festivals typically see a spike in attendance and profits in their third year. He said he expects this year’s Jamboree to post significantly better numbers…
And here’s part of Merrill Guerra’s response:
…(T)he statement that the DTCDC is keeping “approximately $44,000 that was in the Elvisfest’s bank account,” while true is misleading. The Elvisfest bank account is one of several bank accounts that we have to manage our operations. The money used to fund the Elvisfest was provided by the DTA/DTCDC. It is our money and has always been our money. We routinely move money around between our different accounts. Once the money was no longer required for the Elvisfest it was moved into our Reserve Account to earn interest and into the Jamboree account to fund the needs of that festival. This is something that we have always done and is no different from past years.
Regarding the issue of the Elvisfest volunteers keeping the seed money, I would like offer an analogy to help people understand the context a bit more fully. Everyone knows that Bell Ringers for the Salvation Army are raising that money to give to the Salvation Army. Nobody expects the Bell Ringers to take the pot home at the end of the day to pay the Bell Ringer’s bills. That money belongs to the Salvation Army. In the same way, Mary Decker, as Director of the Elvisfest, was a volunteer for our organization running the festival. She and the other volunteers are and were aware that this festival was a fundraiser for the DTA/DTCDC and that the money used to fund the festival and the money raised by the festival belongs to the DTA/DTCDC. Elvisfest was created by the DTA 12 years ago and operated by us specifically to earn money for our organization. Mary is one of 5 directors that we’ve had over the years. We’re happy that she’s motivated to take what we’ve started and continue on.
The factual inaccuracies occurred in Tom’s story because he insisted on using our October financial statements which do not give a complete picture of the festival financials. We told Tom this multiple times and asked to sit down with him to go over the financials so that he would have the complete picture. He did not use all the information that we submitted to him and did not allow us to explain the issues with the one statement he decided to use. There are expenses that were incurred in 2009 that are not reflected in the 2010 financials and some of our revenue for the Jamboree was recorded under a grant account that is not included within the Jamboree line items. The actual profit for the Elvisfest was $1771 and the profit for the Jamboree was $2253.
Finally, the paid attendance for the festival this year was approximately 2700. It hasn’t been 5,000 – 6,000 for several years now. This is validated by the financials and ticket revenue…
And the following comes from Erik Dotzauer:
…Again, you’re not getting all the facts straight here. You made a number of assertions in your article that are not based upon documentation that I provided you. Instead you chose to quote financial information that was not provided to you by the DTCDC, DTA or Elvisfest. You claim that according to “Depot Town Association financial records, the rock and bluegrass festival lost $6,000 in 2010.” The financial report that I emailed to you after we spoke on Tuesday very clearly stated that the festival turned a profit of $2,253. In that same email, I included the financial report for Elvisfest, which clearly stated a profit of $3,771. There was also a notation adjacent to that number which indicated that the profit included the sale of an asset after the decision to end the festival, therefore increasing the stated profit by $2,000. To that end, Elvisfest generated a profit of $1,771 in 2010.
I don’t really have anything to add. I don’t feel much like quibbling over numbers. Whether a festival made $2,000 or lost $6,000 doesn’t matter much to me. Both seem reasonable enough. What I’m more interested in the decision to drop one festival in favor of another. I wonder if there’s more to the story, or if it really was just the result of demographics, and the fact that the Elvis generation is dying off. I can’t speak for everyone, but the reason I stopped going to Elvisfest wasn’t that I grew too old to walk to the park, but that the ticket price grew so incredibly. I have great memories of Elvisfest (my daughter was born a few hours after the one in 2004) and I’d love to go every year, but I can’t afford the $35 or $40 per ticket that the organizers have been asking for. My point is, I don’t know that a decline in attendance can be attributed solely to the aging of Elvis fans. Anyway, I guess I’m wondering why, if they were both profitable, a decision would be made to cut ties with one.
The other thing that I found fascinating was that the Roots Jamboree took in over $40,000. I suppose it’s possible that it drew 400 people, each spending $100, but I would have guessed it to be considerably less. (My assumption is that the $40,000 includes beer sales as well as tickets sold, and that it doesn’t include too much in the way of big sponsorships.)
Anyway, I thought that it might be worth discussing here.
Oh, and Tom Perkins isn’t just using controversy to sell papers. He’s also using sex. The gratuitous photo seen here, of delinquent hipsters tweaking the shiny nipples of a man caught in the act of metamorphosing into a monster, accompanied an article about the Shadow Art Fair and the numerous events vying to claim its mantle of greatness.
Oh, and I liked my last quote in that article, in which, after explaining why we decided to take a short break from the Shadow Art Fair, I described our modus operandi… “We’re just trying to have fun and get a bunch of weird people, doing interesting stuff. The format doesn’t matter to us – if it’s an art fair, great – if it’s this other thing, great.” I think that kind of sums things up nicely.
And, as for Tom, I think, even though he’s got a few people mad at him at the moment, he’s probably good for Ypsi. I’ve found his work to date to be pretty evenhanded and well researched. And I’m not just saying that because he chose not to run the quotes from me that would have made me sound like a douche bag, of which there were plenty… Seriously, though, I do appreciate that the powers that be at AnnArbor.com have sent him out our way to flip over rocks and see what’s wigglin’. We need more of that kind of stuff.