Lucidity LLC cut nearly $20,000 from its proposed spring festival budget — an event that would replace Isla Vista’s annual Deltopia — following concerns that the cost for a spring festival would be too much for the Isla Vista Community Services District to shoulder alone.
The original $184,850 proposal was lowered to $159,850, as announced at last Tuesday’s Isla Vista Community Services District (I.V. CSD) meeting. The updated budget still features many of the original proposal’s designs, such as the beer garden and the music stages; however, cuts were still made to several areas to reduce the event’s overall cost, including having less fencing and fewer portable toilets, information kiosks and targeted Facebook advertisements. The updated budget also cut the number of giveaways in half.
The new proposal further removes one of the music stages, a reduction of $7,000, that could potentially be brought back with a sponsorship — something that UC Santa Barbara’s Associated Students (A.S.) could potentially fulfill, according to I.V. CSD General Manager Jonathan Abboud.
Abboud presented a variety of options to enable the board to fund the event during Tuesday’s meeting, including asking UC Santa Barbara to fund the street lighting project as well as drawing money from different sources in the I.V. CSD budget.
Despite the reductions, some board members still expressed concern over the lack of official partners and sponsorships to help cover the cost of the event.
As of last Tuesday’s meeting, no other entity has agreed to fund the festival. However, Board President Spencer Brandt named UCSB, A.S., Santa Barbara City College, the Isla Vista Recreation and Parks District, the city of Goleta and local businesses as current potential sponsors for the festival.
“At the number that we have in front of us with no else at the table with us, I’m not comfortable using our revenue for it, in the full amount,” Director Ethan Bertrand said.
Director Kristie Nguyen agreed with Bertrand’s concerns and suggested scaling down the size and cost of the event to gauge the community’s response, and afterward, determine if the festival was a success and warrants a greater investment.
“When we find out if [the spring festival] is going to be successful, then we can start funding more money. But as of right now, we don’t know the success rate, and we won’t know until it actually happens,” Nguyen said.
Lucidity has also shouldered a portion of its festival budget under Operating Expenses but stressed that the Safety and Security portion is “NOT THE PLACE TO CUT” in the budget, as stated in the proposal.
“I have been continuously telling people that the reason why we want to do this is not because we want Deltopia to be shut down. It’s because we want to draw people — a certain amount of people, not everyone, but a certain amount of people — away from the [Del Playa] area because that is where the public safety problems are,” Brandt said.
In order to gather community feedback regarding the spring festival, the I.V. CSD will be having a town hall at St. George’s Youth Center tomorrow, Oct. 28, at 6 p.m. with Lucidity representatives present. A survey from Lucidity has also been circulated to gather more feedback for the event.
Lucidity nor the IVCSD, has never, not once, proposed to “replace” Deltopia. Deltopia will undoubtedly live on and our intention is to support in making the day more safe while maintaining all its best parts and pieces.