PERTH council voted on a raft of sponsorship requests on Tuesday night, including the last-minute inclusion of the Winter Light Festival.
The City’s sponsorship committee recently voted to recommend the City provide sponsorship to a range of events, including $50,000 for Minespace for the IFLScience Festival, $40,000 for the WA Yachting Foundation Swan River Sailing for the 2018 City of Perth Festival of Sail, $20,000 to Scitech for the Perth Science Festival, and $30,000 to Open House Perth.
The committee had followed City staff’s recommendation to reject Brookfield’s request for $50,000 for the Winter Light Festival, and urged council to do the same.
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READ NOWHowever, Councillor Janet Davidson moved an amendment to grant the event $20,000 in sponsorship.
Cr Reece Harley noted Brookfield was a large and successful commercial entity which ran the Festival in a way that promoted its many properties in the City.
Cr Harley said City staff had rated the Festival a five out of 12 in terms of the City’s sponsorship criteria.
Council voted to approve the $20,000 for Brookfield, with Lord Mayor Lisa Scaffidi and Crs Davidson, Judy McEvoy, Jim Adamos and Keith Yong in favour.
Crs Harley, Lily Chen, James Limnios and Jemma Green voted against the proposal.
Recently, the City rejected a request from Mellen Events for sponsorship of a live music venue at the former Piccadilly Cinema.
At the time, Ms Scaffidi noted it was a commercial venture and said she had received a phone call from a businessperson asking if the council was giving away free money.
Unlike the Winter Light Festival, the sponsorship committee had recommended support for the Piccadilly venue.
Mellen Events director Brad Mellen told Guardian Express City staff described the sponsorship application as “one of the best they had seen” in terms of meeting criteria.
Other beneficiaries of Tuesday evening’s vote included the Perth Children’s Hospital Foundation for The Big Splash, the 2017 Perth Greek Glendi Festival, the Perth International Boat Show and the Sabre Sailing Association National Championship Regatta.
The Color Run Perth, Think.Eat.Save, and the 2017 Tesla Expo will miss sponsorship from City of Perth in 2017-18.
About 18,000 people participated in the Color Run innn November.
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