Vancouver To Scale Back Public Parties

I for one am outraged that Vancouver is pouring out the beer to make more room for champagne!

Vancouver is scaling back plans for public parties during the 2010 Games while leaving their budget to wine and dine politicians and corporate executives untouched.

City council voted Tuesday to cut $5 million from their $23-million budget for public entertainment sites, citing trouble raising sponsorship money.

Economic challenges and competition from other so-called live sites also means the city won't rule out shutting down the smaller of the two planned sites to stay within the new $18-million budget.

"Our goal should be to have a huge success with whatever we're doing and not get it so diluted down since we have to have two (sites) versus one," said city manager Penny Ballem.

The free public parties are being planned for a downtown park and an old bus lot, and will include live entertainment and television coverage of sports events for 12 hours a day during the Games.

The federal government is contributing $10 million to the site and the city share is $5 million.

The remaining $3 million will come from three sponsors the city has already attracted, any others they can sign up and food and merchandise sales.

Live Nation, the company that produced the Pemberton music festival last summer, is being offered the contract to produce the events, along with U.S.-based Five Currents.

Public event sites are also being planned by provincial governments, corporate sponsors, sports associations and cultural groups.

Ballem said the Olympic organizing committee has raised concerns that all of the groups are over-extending themselves in Vancouver's tight downtown core.

"There is more work that needs to be done with (the organizing committee) around what do we think is sufficient for the downtown," she said.

While city officials say they haven't been able to attract as much funding as they'd hoped for the public events, they see potential for attracting future funding to Vancouver through corporate hospitality programs during the Games.

The city will spend $2 million on a hospitality program for visiting politicians and corporate executives during the Games.

"We think that this is very much the business of the city in terms of some hosting capacity," said Dave Rudberg, the city's outgoing director of Olympic operations.

The plan includes buying as many as 1,700 tickets to give away to mayors of other municipalities or businesses leaders, which raised the ire of some city councillors at Tuesday's meeting.

"I think this is an inappropriate use of our funding," said Councillor Ellen Woodsworth, whose concerns were echoed by her colleague David Cadman.

He suggested it was wrong for taxpayers to foot the bill for hosting dignitaries and business leaders when many people couldn't buy tickets themselves.

Some of the tickets purchased by the city from Olympic organizers would be resold to third parties. Officials pledged Tuesday to create criteria for who would or would not get the free tickets as well as develop an accounting mechanism to keep track.

The city says it's hoping other government agencies will chip in for the hospitality programs, which also include events for International Olympic Committee officials and their spouses.

Officials are also looking at running a "protocol" headquarters during the Games at a downtown Vancouver community centre.

That's on top of a planned $1.5-million "Vancouver House" to promote the city to the public and to dignitaries.

The city has budgeted $20 million for the Games, not including funds coming from the provincial and federal governments.

I say let the big-wigs take care of themselves and spend the money letting the people of Vancouver and tourists alike enjoy the games! Forget the wining and dining – we need beer and big screens!