The concept of how much and for how long Ocean City should fund special events is a complicated matter, resulting in efforts to create a formal policy to guide government officials likely being doomed.
While Councilman John Gehrig’s intentions are sound, there are too many practical factors that make his goal of creating a policy to guide the city with special event funding unrealistic. However, it would be wise for the city to create a set of general procedures to follow to ensure fairness when deciding how to carve out funding for events.
A robust debate took place last month at City Hall over how long the city should continue to provide funding to new events. The philosophy is seed money from the city will help launch fledgling events, which aspire to be economic generators. The concept is early support from the city will allow the events to build a following with the goal being for them to eventually be self-sustaining. One event that called the city’s policy into question is a craft beer festival, which was seeking funding support from the city despite being a popular event for a few years. Funding was sought to allow the event to grow after its recent success required it move to the convention center.
“The city is investing in this craft beer event and it’s growing to the point it needs to be moved to the convention center,” Gehrig said. “That’s a great thing and I’m happy for them and there’s mutual benefit for the city. I just think we need a policy for the TAB that spells out funding for pre-existing events. … We basically got in the way of private enterprise. Those are the kinds of unintended consequences. I don’t think it can be arbitrary because then you can have personal preference coming into play. That’s why we need a policy.”
Businessman Todd Ferrante, who serves on the city’s tourism commission and the Tourism Advisory Board, said a case-by-case review of events will need to occur to ensure the city is getting the most out of its investments.
“If we limited it just to seed money, we would have never kept providing funds to support Bike Week,” he said. “We’ve funded that for more than three years and look at what that has become.”
Each event is different and must be judged separately. The current process of having the events reviewed and vetted by TAB followed by a recommendation to the council seems to be working fine. Though a formal policy would be best in a perfect world, there are too many intangibles and specifics to consider with each event for there ever to be an official protocol to follow.
