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HomeMy WebLinkAboutCC 1974-10-17 Discussion ItemEXCERPTS PROM BUDGET HEARING OCTOBER 17, 1974 CHARLES IVES F'ES 'tVAL Mrs. Gordon: Mr. Andrews, we have quite a sum of money budgeted for our concerts in our regular budget. Will that cover the twelve thousand dollars'that we need for the Ives Centennial? Mr. Andrews: No, Ma'am, it will not. Mrs. Gordon: Well, we have been talking about this Ives Centennial at this Commission level for quite some time; and to find out now that we are just saying here, goodbye, nice to have seen you, is rather shocking. Mr. Andrews: I don't think the Commission ever made any commitment that they were going to fund this activity. Mrs. Gordon: We didn't make any definite commitment, but we certainly implied that we were in favor of it. Mr. Andrews: Well, I think the City Commission is in favor of many things, but when you get down to the reality of trying to find the money to fund it, it is just not there, and-- - Mrs. Gordon: I recognize that you are taking some dif- ferent route that had been anticipated, OK. Mr. Andrews: But, Mrs. Gordon and members of the Commis- sion, when we began further evaluating this we began to wonder real seriously whether this would meet the criteria established for federal revenue sharing funds, and that was the reason for putting this proposal of the Ives Centennial and the Latin Chamber Music into two categories; lumping them up in a ten thousand dol- lar request here, is that perhaps we can justify this on the basis of the fact that it will be a form of recreation, but I would seriously doubt that we could include a hundred and some thousand dollars, or any money - -- • Mr. O'Reilley: May 1 just make one correction? She said twelve; it should be ten, rather than twelve. That is the figure that had been settled on prior, and she happened to be reading a figure from the wrong column and just happened to say twelve. I only have a very short discussion, and that is this: Mrs. Alexander pointed out correctly that we have obtained an enormous amount of publicity. We are getting a great amount of attention for our first week of our festival, but the plan has always been that it go on all season and continue to attract to the City and the whole area people who might come here under other circumstances, or who might not come here, I mean, under other circumstances, but who might be more interested in coming here if we had a cultural event of this sort going through the season. Certainly we are going to get more publicity even than we have already had. You will notice the new magazine of Delta Airlines for this month there is a very nice story about Mr. Ives and about Miami. It does not mention any of the festivals occurring anywhere else in the United States for Ives; only the one here. There will be more, and there will be national cover- age in the press. I am concerned that we follow through the rest of the season and not fizzle out. A nation's greatest de- fense is its cultural heritage, and this is an important figure in America's cultural history and one who has been undeservedly neglected. We are attempting something very ambitious for Miami, and when I first went to New York and the East to tell them we were going to do this, the first thing they said was, who are you going to get to come and play everything? Surely you don't have any orchestra or musicians down there that can do these things. Once we have proved that we have these things I think it will be of great benefit, not only for these people elsewhere, but for some of the people in our own community who downgrade anything cultural on a local level. And we have three elements that this festival will help do. Number one; it will start our Bicentennial celebration with an immense success. Number two; it will contri- bute to the downtown Miami cultural development. And number three; it will certainly permanently change the image of Miami in other parts of the world. Mr. Plummer: Paul, what would you say of the ten thousand dollars that is allocated to cultural programs would go to the Ives Centennial? Mr. Andrews: Well, I think that if you identify it as a pledge of funds toward the Ives Centennial we may very well need to find the ten thousand dollars after you have made the commit- ment from some other source, because I don't know that the federal auditors would approve that kind of - - -. But I think if we treat- - and because it is such a small amount of money in relation to a total of 8.9 million dollars- -that if we treat it in terms of recreation, and we make a contribution as we trove through this through a controlled process that the City would be utilizing, and recognizing that it will be recreation for the City, perhaps that will be successful. Mr. Plummer: A third; a half? Mr. Andrews: Maybe a little more than that, of the ten thousand. Maybe seventy -five hundred might be available.