Martin Austermuhle
Photo by ellievanhoutte
As organizers of the Caribbean Carnival Festival and Parade work furiously to find a new location for the annual event, there’s one place that they won’t be getting any help from: Mayor Vince Gray.
Gray’s office sent out a tersely worded statement yesterday lamenting that the parade won’t likely happen on Georgia Avenue this year but stressing that there’s not much they can do about it: “We are disappointed that we were unable to reach an agreement with the event organizers that would have allowed the Carnival to continue.” (Ward 4 Councilmember Muriel Bowser is helping organizers find a new location, her aides told us yesterday.)
According to invoices and letters provided by Gray’s office and posted below, the parade’s organizers owe the city over $210,000 for the 2010 and 2011 parade, the majority—$179,000—to pay for the police that line the route and block off intersections along it. (In 2011, the carnival received a $30,000 community fund award from the city, which it used to pay certain expenses related to the parade.)
In a letter sent to the organizers in February, Deputy Mayor for Public Safety and Justice Paul Quander stressed that if those debts weren’t settled, the city wouldn’t be able to continue supporting the festival.
“We were all very clear that DCCC was required to satisfy the outstanding 2010 obligation in addition to the new obligations incurred in 2011. I further stated that approval of the 2012 Carnival would be contingent upon payment of any outstanding balances from the 2010 and 2011 Carnivals,” he wrote.
He also seemed disinclined to let those debts slide because of the parade’s 20-year history: “For perspective, know that there were 107 special events in the District of Columbia in 2011. We ask all organizations who plan and sponsor special events to adhere to the same standards.”
The potential cancellation of the Caribbean Carnival has prompted an interesting question tackled by Richard Layman today: is D.C. being too hard on street parades and festivals? He thinks so:
[W]hen he was President of the WDC Economic Partnership, I had an interesting conversation with Steve Moore, and he made the point that the city was looking at street festivals as an expense and fee generator, when actually street festivals (Adams Morgan Day, H Street Festival, Mt. Pleasant Day, etc.) are significant economic development and city promotion devices. He’s absolutely right.
That’s the point made by a recent Howard University study on the Caribbean Parade: it brings in money for local businesses.
