Lolly Scramble for Event Funding

By John Freer

It was labelled as a lolly scramble by one councillor, and from a bystander’s observation, a debacle may have been a more apt description – this when it came to handing out Thames Coromandel event development funding yesterday.

The Thames Coromandel District has a policy where its district fund is intended to stimulate events which attract visitors from outside of the district.

On the meeting agenda was a report from staff which allocated $31,000 in funding to proposed events. There was an issue, none of the recommendations met the criteria of the council policy.

Regardless, the staff agreed that “seed funding” could be provided as a one-off.

Cr Rekha Giri-Percival kicked off the debate querying if in fact the funding criteria was right. Cr John Grant questioned why funding was being provided to events, which did not bring visitors into the region, and why commercial operators were receiving ratepayers funding.

Cr Robyn-Sinclair was online, expressing her discomfort about funding events which did not meet the council criteria. She was happy to fund those which did.

The Deputy Mayor, Cr Terry Walker chimed in seeing an opportunity to get more funding for the planned Matariki festival on his home patch of Whangamata.  He waxed lyrical about the success of last year’s event attended by “thousands of people”.

Stepping up to the plate next, Cr Peter Revell said there was obviously something fundamentally wrong when councillors had spent more time talking about a $31,000 fund, than the hundreds of thousands of dollars spent on waste.

He did not want to proceed with the recommendation uttering the lolly scramble reference before tossing in a curve ball saying maybe the funds could be better distributed by the regional tourism organisation – Destination Hauraki Coromandel.

Taking the opposite approach, Cr Deli Connell wanted to go ahead with the recommendation believing it was not the place to debate the policy.

Cr Walker then furthered his move supporting the Matariki event, amending the recommendation to add in $10,000 for the event’s organisers.

This prompted a response from Cr Sinclair who said she would vote against it as she did not have all the necessary information. The amended motion was lost.

Mayor Len Salt took the opportunity to put up a motion to remove the whole matter from the agenda, but after an interjection by Cr John Morrissey, this was ruled out of order. The mayor also withdrew an attempted motion for the matter to go back to staff to decide based on the policy.

Council chief executive, Aileen Lawrie had been sitting patiently, then noted if it was to go back to staff, they needed direction of what the councillors wanted them to do.

The discussion was not over Cr Giri-Percival offered $10,000 to one of the potential recipients, Cr Grant said if the funding criteria needed changing then it should be changed and then readvertised, Cr Revell called on staff to review the whole process.

There was a resolution after all of this, it was moved by Cr Giri-Percival and seconded by Cr Gary Gotlieb that $23,500 be allocated to Ridge Runner Coromandel – $10,000, Whangamata Adventure Race – $6000, Mercury Bay Film Festival – $2000, Matariki Whangamata – $3500, Whitianga Run Fest – $2000.

Two events on the original recommendation missed out being Bayleys Paradise Golf Classic and Wings and Wheels Thames.