Dear Editor:
New Westminster business association not interested in amateur, small-scale events, The Record online, Feb. 24.
Thanks to the above article by Theresa McManus, we are now all better enlightened about Uptown Live's plans for New Westminster.
It is so nice to see what out-of-town interests have in mind to entertain New Westminster citizens with a healthy dose of taxpayer money that it received prematurely, unsupported by detail and not having been subject to a city audit. The following points emerge:
1. Although Uptown Live, its principals and hired guns have been very disparaging about the Hyack Festival Association, it wants to capitalize on the large crowds drawn by the Hyack International Parade in order to assure success of its own venture. It's too bad that the fate of the parade they want to bootstrap, for their own ends, may be in jeopardy as the result of a delayed funding decision of city council.
Perhaps the high-paid help at city hall will be marshalled to put on the parade if Hyack funding is denied.
2. The Hyack International Parade, not a small-scale event, relies on hundreds of hours of community volunteer non-paid effort whereas the new, improved and larger version of Uptown Live relies on hundreds of hours of so-called professional paid help - help hired from outside the community using New West taxpayer dollars.
3. On the one hand its principals complain about the logistics of coat-tailing on Hyack International Parade crowds, but on the other hand admit that they can't pull it off without milking them. This is the kind of brood parasitism characteristic of the brown-headed cowbird that lays its eggs in another species' nest and devolves the rearing responsibility on the host bird.
4. It appears that Mr. Slotman watched his cowbird protégé milk the Hyack host last year, and now that it has left the nest, Mr. Smith goes to Uptown Live, at least according to their application to city council, for a minimum of $10,000. But wait, that number was from an "outdated application."
Perhaps city council should review that application with "updated" information at best, or audit Uptown Live at worst.
In summary: City council has rushed to approve funding for, $28,000 cash plus $20,000 in-kind services, a new scheme, with no history, to benefit out of town professionals at the expense of approving funding of volunteer community activities in a timely manner as they sit on an "audit" of an independent long-standing community-based organization. Things that make you go Hmmmmmmm.
E.C. "Ted" Eddy, Coquitlam
