It is no secret that times are tight. The City of Norfolk is eliminating positions to deal with shortfalls. So I’m absolutely mystified as to how they could possibly conclude that it is OK to give $11,000 to the operators of Afr’Am Festival to help pay police officers who worked at the festival.
There is no doubt that the City has jerked around the festival, which for years was held on Memorial Day weekend. But providing Town Point Park for free plus giving a $40,000 grant was enough. What got me was this (emphasis mine):
[City Manager Regina] Williams said Donna Smith, head of Afr’Am sponsor Southeastern Virginia Arts Association, met with her the day after the festival, contending that the security arrangements, approved by the Norfolk police, were too expensive.
Wait. The day after? Why wasn’t the organization told in advance what the cost would be? Isn’t it normal to have a project budget, with signed contracts prior to an event? If not, why not?
I suspect there’s more to this story – probably discussed in that closed session – than meets the eye. But based on publicly available information, it’s a bad decision. Council should not be bailing out organizations after the fact. No, the amount isn’t large. But a few thousand here and a few thousand there, and pretty soon we’re talking about real money.
VIVIAN J. PAIGE | All Politics is Local 
Suspect the conversation goes like:
AAFest: Umm, have no money, and your officers aren’t getting paid.
Norfolk: Well, we’re not really up for a bunch of angry police officers.
AAFest: Then how about you give us the money to pay them?
Norfolk council considers its need for police union endorsements, and says: Okay.
Could be 😉
I feel the City ad no choice. There was one price charged for off duty police officers for Harborfest and a different price for off duty police officers for Afr’Am. This could be construed as discrimination.
I understand what you’re saying. But here’s my problem: between whom was the contract? Was it Afr’Am and the police officers individually? was it Afr’Am and the Police Department? Was it Afr’Am and the City?
If there was a disparity between the amounts charged, how come the City didn’t just make the police/police department accept a lower amount?
And how come they didn’t look at the bill until after the festival was over?
There are a bunch of questions worth asking here:
1. How much revenue did the festival actually bring in this year versus last year? Did the festival planners anticipate a lot more admissions revenue than they actually collected?
2. Norfolk PD has to approve the security plan for the event. Was the plan changed at all this year? If so, why? If the plan is essentially unchanged, did their rates go up?
I’m wondering whether Norfolk P.D. tried hiking the price between this year and last year; since they have veto power over any cheaper plan, they essentially get to set their own prices. Today’s revelation that Afr’ Am had to pay $7/hour over what Harborfest paid suggests that’s a strong possibility.
Especially with the city deciding that it wants to get itself involved rather than leaving it up to the judicial process to sort the mess out, I’m wondering if maybe there isn’t more to this story that the city and the police department wouldn’t prefer to see kept out of a court document.