The City of St. Albert is stepping up with $15,000 in last-minute funding for this year's Snowflake Festival after the annual event was initially cancelled due to the St. Albert and District Chamber of Commerce not having the funds or staff resources to organize it.
The Snowflake Festival is a one-evening event downtown that usually occurs in late November or early December as a kick-off to the holiday season. The festivities usually involve a special appearance from Santa Claus, a petting zoo, the lighting of the tree outside the St. Albert Community Hall, and more.
The $15,000 in one-time funding, which is being taken out of the city's stabilization reserve, will be on top of the $8,000-$10,000 of “in-kind” support the city provides to the festival each year for things like road closures, waste collection, park and ride services, and marketing, according to a report to council written by the city's director of economic development Mike Erickson.
Council approved the one-time funding unanimously. The vote was a result of a motion brought forward by Coun. Mike Killick, who is one of five St. Albertans self-described as the “Friends of the Snowflake” who have banded together to organize the event after word spread a month ago the chamber wasn't going to move forward with the event this year.
“The Snowflake Festival draws somewhere between 10,000 and 15,000 people downtown, so it's a very significant community event,” Killick said. “It's a great event that's community-wide and we clearly did not want to see that not happen this year.”
“The chamber advised us just a short while ago, three or four weeks ago, that they were not able to continue to play the lead role in organizing it and they just didn't have the people capacity.”
Killick said besides himself, the other community members who have stepped up to organize the event this year include Mike Howes, the board chair of chamber; Michelle McDonald, the co-owner of Tryst Wine and Small Plates and one of the organizers of the recently established downtown Business Improvement Area (BIA); Rosanna Fischer, the first vice-chair of the chamber; and Mark Kay, one of the chamber's board of directors.
Howes said not only does the chamber need support in organizing the festival this year, which he said is expected to cost upwards of $30,000, but in the future the chamber is hoping to rid itself of direct responsibility for the event.
“It's really been deemed a city (organized) event we feel, most people feel that way I think, ... so we just felt that (the city) should be more responsible,” Howes said, adding that the event may also be something that the BIA takes over once the group is more established.
“It just doesn't really seem to be a long-term fit for the chamber, yet the chamber doesn't want to let it go, the city doesn't really want to run it and they don't want to let it go, (so) we think that if the BIA downtown can keep its feet wet, keep its momentum, they'd be a perfect candidate.”
Speaking to council on Oct. 3, Howes said the funding would go towards general operational costs for the festival.
In an interview prior to council's vote on Oct. 3, Coun. Ken MacKay said he didn't think the city would be able to run the event in the years to come, so he's hoping the $15,000 in funding for this year's event is a short-term solution for just making sure the festival happens this year.
“The city just doesn't have the capacity to run this,” MacKay said. “We don't have a project office or a special area within our administration to look after planning and booking all of the acts, and it might be something that our new (BIA) downtown looks at maybe picking up but they're going to need a lot of assistance in the short-term, and right now I would swear that they don't have the capacity.”
Likewise, Coun. Wes Brodhead said during the debate that he was in favour of the motion, however he would be hesitant to support similar funding in future years.
Coun. Shelley Biermanski said she would have liked to see the funding request fall under one of the city's grant programs, such as the Community Events Grant, although that program has a $5,000 maximum.
“If we're going off and just deciding to do that outside of policy, it's kind of detrimental to the community event grants that we do because that's the regular process of how you're supposed to do events,” Biermanski said. “On the other hand, people want the Snowflake Festival, it draws a whole bunch of community ... and if the chamber can't do it, we need to plan a little bit further ahead of time.”
This year's Snowflake Festival is scheduled for Dec. 1.
