This week’s Hockeyfest / Hockey fiasco has been an interesting one. I’m continually surprised by the municipal involvement — or rather and critically for some the lack thereof — in how this event was being organized and ultimately how it fell apart.
Needless to say, after publishing my thoughts on the subject Thursday, I stand apart from my media colleagues at the Brant News. They wrote:
“And, with Brantford’s reputation at stake, why did Friel and the city not pull out all stops to make sure Brantford avoided this black eye once concerns were identified? Instead of moving to cancel the festival, all organizations involved could surely have worked to pull off the event.
Some might ask what the big deal about all of this is. Hockeyfest is only a music festival, after all. Well, folks, this is a big deal – a really big deal.
Hockeyfest represented something more than a concert, it represented something more to a city trying to rebrand itself and present a new, 21st century image to the wider world. For two years, the festival showed we might just be able to compete with any community when it comes to staging a major cultural and entertainment event. Its cancellation this year proves we obviously can’t.”
Taking that logic to its extreme, that would then mean that as a promoter or events organizer, I could refuse to work with the city’s own staff (due to disliking an earlier council decision), do things all by my lonesome but then not really have to worry since the city would bail my ass out when I start having problems because of a related reputational issue?
As a private, for-profit organization (Ralph Spoltore told me the company is a non-profit on June 27), does the host municipality hold any responsibility in helping my event be successful? Particularly when I deliberately choose to hold that event in a non-municipal venue? I struggle with the reputational side of the argument as well. When someone not associated with you does something that has a negative impact on your reputation, are you supposed to do everything in your power to correct that person’s decisions? Or should you focus on buttressing and firewalling your involvement?
Hosting an event in Brantford as a for-profit, private company should not be a free ride to tap into the city’s organizational, financial and human resources when you start to miss critical deadlines. I also don’t believe it’s incumbent upon the municipality to be monitoring your progress on those deadlines to make sure you don’t miss them. Isn’t the for-profit, private company mantra in dealing with governments “get out of my way” as opposed to “make sure I do my job?”
Friel ideally shouldn’t have been involved at all, but he was called into / attended the May 25 meeting and then was liaising between various people and Ralph Spoltore. The history of this event and its previously closer ties — physically and operationally — to the street hockey festival, perhaps clouds the issue on where the line between Hockeyfest and the Corporation of the City of Brantford should have been.
I haven’t seen anything yet to suggest the city should have been as involved as it was— if it’s out there, I’d gladly consider it.
There will be another successful music festival in Brantford is someone out there wants to make it happen and is better organized than this particular person was in this particular year. Saying because this one failed no one else will is simply defeatist and rather quite absurd.
Categories: Brantford
Brantford
I couldn’t agree more with your point of view! I think it is rather sad that the attitude that is being taken in response to the debacle that hockeyfest has become is one of finger pointing at the city and it’s officials that were seemingly acting to protect everyones well being at the concert. I am so tired of hearing how Brantford messed up. It was not a city run event, there was a seperate entity at work here, the promoter, who was responsible for organizing this event. It was not up to the city and it’s officials and the police department and fire department and every other agency who the promoter had to answer to, to hold the promoters hand and guide him step by step through the process. If he didn’t know what he had to do then he didn’t have any business trying to organize an event of this magnitude!
What’s absurd is you’re belief that this won’t affect the cities reputation and credibility. Doesn’t matter who was to blame, promoters and managers will now see the name Brantford come up and associate it with something unreliable. And since everybody knows each other in the music industry, they can easily blackball this town. And it would be absolutely no skin off their backs.
The city has no legal responcibility to help private enterprise, and if this was somebodies small party I’d agree. But this event had the cities name all over it, “Brantford Hockeyfest”. The promoter was given our tax money in grants, the least they could do is check up on the investment. From a legal stand point Friel didn’t HAVE to do something, but from the side of Logic he should have known this would be another huge stain on Brantford. Worse than an Icomm Center that sat dormant for decades, perhaps even worse than the Massey Ferguson disaster, only time will tell. He had the power to fix this and chose not to, instead he just played mediator so he could appear to be “helping” when, in reality, there’s a good chance he’s the one who gave the BFPD and GRCA the order to cut out…All because of a personal vendetta against Ralph for an arguement they had at Firefighters fashion show where Ralph declared he wouldn’t hold Hockeyfest within Brantford city limits anymore.
In the end, if we can’t depend on our local government to oversee things that happen here (private or public) then why do we even need them? Could we not just elect a wooden stump for mayor and get the same results?
Does the host municipality hold any responsibility to help an event to be successful? Well, if the city receives a benefit from an event’s success, then the city has a stake at least in mitigating any risk of failure. And what’s more, Brantford has shown again and again with large events that this is a policy in action if not in fact.
With previous Hockeyfests, held in concert with the street hockey tournament and on municipal property, we’re told that city staff stepped up to fill in gaps in the organizer’s effort, and not because it was their responsibility to do so, but because the city’s interests in a safe and successful event were at stake. They did the same with Canada Day when it was privately run, in 2009 and 2010.
The risks are certainly different when an event is on city property. Those risks involve civil liability if something were to go wrong. With Hockeyfest at Brant Park, the city was free of that concern for its liability, perhaps happily so. But they weren’t free of the real and quantifiable risks to Brantford’s reputation of a failed event held elsewhere. The city is now reaping the whirlwind from its failure to cover off those risks.
With Hockeyfest 2012, while we don’t know the facts, let’s suppose that the city had a lingering bad feeling about being forced to cover a public safety liability for past events. Let’s suppose that they expected that this event would have organizational challenges, and let’s also suppose that city staff and the Mayor were monitoring developing problems for many weeks, and perhaps even communicated their concerns to GRCA staff. Let’s suppose that this is the reason the Mayor attended the meeting on May 25th, to speak to what he knew or what he expected from the organizer.
What then is the city’s responsibility? To assist the GRCA to be more comfortable about an event the GRCA may be nervous about? To offer to cover off any problems with the security plan?
If Brantford was concerned about making sure the event was a success, if they understood that it was in their interests to see Hockeyfest happen, it’s reasonable to expect the city would have taken those steps. The fact that action was immediately taken to “save Hockeyfest” after the GRCA backed out suggests that someone finally realized the full scope of what failure would mean, even while they disavowed any responsibility for failing to act until it was too late.
Should the city have to step in to save an event? Ideally? No. But as with banks that were “too big to fail,” sometimes the consequences of failing to act are counted to be worse and more long-lasting than the consequences of acting when and as needed. Thrusting your hands behind your back, saying “it’s a private enterprise, we’re not involved” is neither helpful nor consistent with past practice. Better to roll up the sleeves, commit the resources, save the festival and deal with the personal, organizational, operational and policy issues once the party’s over.
The municipality does indeed have a responsibility to help a for-profit organization hold an event. For the simple fact municipal agencies are involved, the Police, fire, abulance & parks were all involved. The municipality sets the rules with all the by-laws they enact, so a measure of responsibility does indeed exist.
Helios, and others above:
Respectfully disagree on the municipal responsibility. Again, this was a
private, for-profitSpoltore told me June 27 the company is a non-profit one event being held in a non-municipal venue. The obligations of these events to meet the provincial fire code, as monitored by the municipal fire department, and security plans approved by a police service (separate from but funded by the municipality) should not mean the city is responsible. Further, the city’s parks department wasn’t involved for 2012. From what I understand, the organizer refused to work with any city employee (parks and rec, tourism, etc.) for the 2012 event.The event organizer and promoter is ultimately and solely responsible for the success of an event. For one who took pains to exclude the city from its organization, it’s particularly callous to suggest the city should have been responsible for helping the event succeed.
This event was obviously, as time has shown, not “too big to fail.” It has failed.
We don’t yet know all the aspects of what led to that failure on the part of the organizer (who’s not been too chatty of late) and any role the political or administrative leadership may have played at any point during the time leading up to its cancellation/postponement.
If there’s credible information out there that would change the matrix on all this for me, I’ve yet to see it (though I have asked for some of it). If I’m proven wrong, then I have no problems eating crow just as publicly as I’ve made this blog post and the related column.
Hugo