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Perth council uses budget surplus to try and snatch back WA Day festival
The City of Perth has dipped into its budget surplus to try and bring the WA Day festival celebrations back into the CBD.
Councillors approved a last minute $150,000 sponsorship grant at a special council meeting on Tuesday night but the offering fell well short of the $500,000 requested by Celebrate WA, the event organiser, which it said was needed to move the event from Burswood.
SOTA could be coming back to the Perth CBD.Credit: SOTA
The Celebrate WA board is now mulling where to hold the $2.6 million event, which runs from June 6 to 7, after not getting all the funding it was after from the local government.
Board member Fiona Kalaf told the special council meeting $150,000 was not adequate.
“The costs of operating in the city are higher [than Burswood] due to traffic management and other requirements that are of course commensurate with an event of this size and this complexity,” she said.
City officers have suggested the event could run at a smaller scale without giving the full $500,000 and traditionally free events could be ticketed at a cost.
The local government has never previously funded the event, even when it was held at Elizabeth Quay and attracted more than 100,000 attendees.
The $500,000 requested was nearly double of what events like the Fringe and Perth Festival received in sponsorship from the City.
Celebrate WA chair Michael Anghie said following the council decision the organisation was assessing the venue options and requirements.
“We look forward to confirming details of the WA Day weekend celebrations in the near future,” he said.
Lord Mayor Basil Zempilas did not vote on the item at Tuesday’s council meeting because of the closeness of his employer, Seven West Media, to the event as its main media partner.
SWM WA chief executive Maryna Fewster is also a board member of Celebrate WA.
Deputy Lord Mayor Sandy Anghie declared a financial interest given her husband Michael was the chair of Celebrate WA and received tickets to the festival’s gala event.
Councillor Brett Fleeton was another council member with an interest, as an employee of the communications company that works with Celebrate WA, and did not vote.
Budget impacts
The $150,000 of unexpected expenditure on the WA Day festival takes the City of Perth’s major events expenditure account above its $800,000 limit and eats into the overall surplus.
The city’s recent mid-year budget review resulted in a healthier set of books for the local government after getting $11.8 million more from parking fees and fines than anticipated.
And $10 million worth of loans had been pencilled into the original 2020-21 budget, but no longer appear to be needed.
The WA Day festival money would come out of the surplus as opposed to a recent budget saving created by the Deputy Lord Mayor at last week’s council meeting.
Ms Anghie successfully moved a motion to scrap $200,000 earmarked for the city’s winter school holiday program and instead put the money back into a grants and sponsorship fund for the 2021-22 financial year for small events.