Can Free Summer Concerts Survive City’s Struggles?

By: Richard Montenegro Brown | Original Article at pe.com

Each Wednesday in July, Brent Powell can be found relaxing in a comfy lawn chair under a shaded canopy, staking claim to the front row for that evening’s free concert.

More than 12 hours earlier – around 5 a.m. last week – Powell began to set up off the left side of the stage in Beaumont’s Stewart Park in anticipation of Martha Davis and the Motels, the third free concert in this year’s annual summer concert series.

It was around 2 p.m. Wednesday, and Powell was waiting for as many as 20 of his friends to show up, a loose band of locals and beyond who have met up through the concerts and have continued their camaraderie via a Facebook group aptly named the “Front Row Crew.”

The group is only a couple of years old, Powell said, but he has been a fixture, front and center, for at least eight years.

“It’s something that people look forward to every year,” said the longtime Beaumont resident who lives just a few blocks from the park. “I do think this has put Beaumont on the map.”

Since 2006, Beaumont has hosted a free summer concert series unlike any other in the Inland Empire, where big-name acts, while sometimes past their best-selling peak, have graced the small stage of Stewart Park, mingling up close with the crowd and sometimes drawing more than 15,000 people to a show, according to city estimates.

Yet in its 10th anniversary season, following Kenny “The Gambler” Rogers’ show this week, it’s anyone’s guess whether the series will continue, or in what form if it remains. Rogers’ show alone will cost the city some $65,000 at a time when Beaumont’s solvency is undecided.

Draft audit reports of the embattled city’s finances have revealed that the general fund – the city’s chief operating budget – has been running at deficit levels for several years. And the concert series, combined with the annual Fourth of July celebration, has consistently cost the city about $325,000 every year out of that general fund. The concert series itself impacts the budget to the tune of $250,000 per year.

Bob Sherwood is the man behind the concert series, spending that quarter-million dollars to lure performers as varied and popular as LeAnn Rimes, Rick Springfield and Switchfoot. Where cities around the county, from Moreno Valley to Corona, Temecula and Riverside, offer free concerts, they generally hire lower-priced tribute acts and cover bands. Beaumont stands out – and has become known for its summer concerts, Sherwood said.

“It’s amazing to see the community keep it going for 10 years. We’ve had some amazing acts, and I’m so glad we could end with a legend like Kenny Rogers,” he said. “I think the community really supports it, especially when they’re there every concert at 6 in the morning to 9 or 10 at night.”

The city’s community services director has had a hand in every aspect of every show since the start, from helping to book the bands with Beaumont’s contracted booking agency, M&M Group Entertainment, to prepping the backstage dressing rooms.

On Wednesday, Sherwood could be seen running around the stage making adjustments, speaking with the sound and lighting crews, directing the community services staff on flex time to work the show without accruing overtime, and stepping out every so often to tease Powell, who had his fiancée of three years, Madeline Marchese, by his side.

This was Marchese’s third year attending the concert series, and it still amazes her how big the production can get. “It didn’t occur to me how expansive the concert series was until I looked back at a picture of the crowd.

“Not a piece of green in the park,” she said.

The nature of a free concert makes it impossible to take an accurate head count of those attending, but Beaumont Chamber of Commerce executive Sheri Bogh can attest that the chamber set up its farmers market around the series because of the thousands it draws. Bogh said the market brings in about $12,000 per year in proceeds to the chamber.

Quantifying the success of the series through sales-tax dollars from food, gasoline and other services purchased in the city is difficult to do. However, Bogh, Sherwood and others say the true measure of success has been the civic pride.

“They bring a hometown feeling of pride to our community that you just can’t get anywhere else,” Bogh said.

Powell spoke of that “hometown feeling” as well. In his near decade of concerts, he has never witnessed police hauling off troublemakers and hasn’t really seen any fights. What he has seen are friendships form, and lots of fun and intimate moments between famous artists and members of the crowd who are close enough to the talent to reach out and touch them.

Marchese remembers the LeAnn Rimes concert of 2013, when the performer was tabloid fodder. Marchese said Rimes talked between almost every song, explaining what was going on in her life at the time.

“Sitting right there in the front row, I felt for her,” she said. “These artists pour their souls out.”

IS ‘FREE’ REALLY FREE?

How often does that happen, Powell asked, “everything this does for the community, coming into a small, little town to see a big act for free?”

Yes, the Beaumont concert is free to fans, yet every tax-paying resident city is footing the bill. But for how long?

The city will be asked to take a long, hard look at all of its expenditures in the coming weeks. Beaumont officials are traveling two self-imposed paths: Hiring an outside firm, MGO Certified Public Accountants, to delve into the city’s books and internal spending practices, and hiring consulting firm Urban Futures to build an accurate budget for fiscal 2015-2016, which started July 1.

Just how the city fell into such a precarious place financially is still unclear. The city’s finances are being audited by the state Controller’s Office; the Riverside County District Attorney’s Office has launched its own investigation into the city and its relationship with a longtime consultant, Urban Logic Inc.; and the man who controlled the finances, City Manager Alan Kapanicas, is on paid leave while the drama plays out, with most of his key subordinates having left the city.

Beaumont doesn’t even have a proposed budget. Urban Futures has until late August to present a full draft to council, acting City Manager Elizabeth Gibbs-Urtiaga said.

It isn’t known whether the concert series will be part of that proposed budget, at least not in the manner it existed for the previous nine years.

Sherwood said he’s preparing a “decision packet” giving a rough outline of the costs the city has worked with for the last decade.

This will be the first time the cost of the concert series has been submitted this way since its first year, after which, Gibbs-Urtiaga said, the $250,000 used to stage the series became an automatic part of what is called a programmatic budget submitted to the City Council for review and approval.

Basically, after 2005 it was built into the bottom line on top of which additional expenditures were added each year by the council.

Although Gibbs-Urtiaga said it was believed the revenue supported such an expenditure, it has become apparent through draft audit reports that a very different picture has emerged over the last few years.

MGO reports indicate the city has been operating in a deficit for some time, and city officials are believed to have moved restricted funds from community facilities district bond revenue into the general fund to keep operations going.

The city still owes $10 million to its restricted accounts, and that money must be repaid.

Sherwood said there was not a true grasp on whether revenues supported the concert series. He twice said that had he known the city was in the red and possibly couldn’t afford the concerts, they would not have been held.

“Most of us were not involved in the budget-building process. We never saw the bottom number,” he said. “Don’t get me wrong. We were asked to have our input into the budget. … But we were never involved in the revenue side of it.”

City officials, elected and staff, will get their first glimpse this week at what kind of revenues can be expected in the current budget year. Gibbs-Urtiaga said a special meeting has been called for 6 p.m. Tuesday, at which Urban Futures will present council with a revenue report.

She stressed it is not the budget, but a working piece of it. As of Thursday, the revenue report was not part of the informational packet to the special meeting agenda.

CHOICES AHEAD

City Councilman Lloyd White, one of three people elected to the council last year, ran as an outspoken critic of the city and a reformer. He is among the council members who asked to see the budget done in a different way, including line item expenditures and revenues, instead of the way it had been done for at least 20 years, Gibbs-Urtiaga said.

White, like most members of the community, is a fan of the concert series. But not at the expense of such city services as police and fire protection, both of which are paid for from the general fund, as the concerts are.

“We have been operating in a deficit for four or five years,” he said, “and that we have to turn around.”

White said he thinks the concerts are “important events, but when you are cutting from the budget, you have to look everywhere.”

“It’s important that we keep city services at the highest level that we can,” White added. “But we need to make sure we’re moving forward in a solvent position.”

Frequent Beaumont critic Judy Bingham, who has been at odds with city officials for more than a decade, sees the concert series from a very different perspective.

“Alan Kapanicas used the concerts to show how well the city was doing financially, to be able to provide for ‘free,’” according to Bingham, adding that the concerts were a ruse to hide the fact that Kapanicas and Urban Logic consultants working with the city were “stealing taxpayer money.”

“I think knowing what we know now and what has come forward, and the fact that we have no money,” Bingham said, “it seems that maybe they better think about it for next year before they sign another group up for concerts.”

REMAINING HOPEFUL

Chamber executive Bogh doesn’t want to see the concert series end. Not only does it affect her fundraising efforts for the chamber, but it will be a blow to community pride.

She said it has been a tough couple of months for a city in the crosshairs of the outside agencies’ investigations, the resulting media coverage and local critics and gadflies.

“I think we are cautiously optimistic” that the series will continue, said Bogh, who asked the city during a July 7 council meeting to consider keeping the concert series in its budget.

“I think we’re trying to pick back up from kind of being knocked down from this, and we need this to keep morale up,” she said. “But our community knows we’re still a great community.”

Recently, as she rode in the Beaumont-Cherry Valley parade, Mayor Brenda Knight said she heard several shouts from the people lining the parade route asking her to keep the concert series.

“I have had other people who have contacted me personally,” Knight said. “We bring in a lot of people from other cities, but we still have our families from within the city who enjoy this immensely.”

Gibbs-Urtiaga said she is confident the City Council will make the right decision.

“I’m not concerned or worried,” she said. “The council will do what’s best for Beaumont.”

Powell, probably the most visible of the summer’s “Front Row Crew” and a self-described cheerleader for Beaumont, says he is optimistic yet realistic.

“It would be pretty sad if they couldn’t do it,” he said while waiting for Martha Davis and the Motels to sound-check Wednesday. “But other things have to take precedent.

“I’m pretty confident if there’s a way they can do it, they will,” he said.