Sumner City Council voted June 5 to adopt a schedule of fees for special events held publicly in city limits. All special events permits filed July 6 and beyond will incur a cost of $400, $600 or $1,200 upfront to the organizer, depending on the scale of the spectacle.

It is the first time the city will charge for special events beyond the cost of banners, and represents a move intended to alleviate the costs of staffing parades and celebrations with police.

“In the past, times were good; the budget was fat,” Community Development Director Paul Rogerson said as he presented the reasoning for the bill brought before council. “We’re living in a different world.”

Under the fee schedule, every event organizer will pay a $200 application fee. The organizer additionally pays a $200 staffing charge for events costing the city less than $1,500, a $400 charge for events costing between $1,501 and $2,500, and a $1,000 charge for events costing more than $2,501.

The schedule took into account 14 annual events held in Sumner, the most expensive event being the Daffodil Parade at a calculated $6,215 cost to the city. Total calculated city costs for special events were $24,310 annually, a figure derived from the fixed administrative cost of $480 per event and varying public works and police staffing costs. Under the approved fee schedule, estimated city costs would be reduced to $12,221.75.

“(Under the plan) the city continues to subsidize events by about 50 percent,” Rogerson said.

Over the course of the bill’s development, the council researched fees neighboring cities charge for their special events.

Still, the bill has met with some protest as it developed. Kris Arnold, the secretary for the Sumner Downtown Association, grand deputy for the International Order of the Rainbow for Girls and former 10-year city councilwoman, saw the fees as a potential catalyst as the end of some longstanding city events.

“I am here again to ask you to please reconsider this ordinance,” Arnold said. “This is going to have a significant impact on (SDA). If we put these fees in place, I’m telling you that a lot of these events are at risk.

“All of these events bring people to Sumner. I know comments have been made about other cities and what they do, but Sumner is Sumner.”

In a statement requested by and sent to the Courier-Herald via email after the meeting, Arnold said she understood the difficulty in balancing the city budget, but questioned why it could not seek ways to cut costs via volunteer labor.

“While this ordinance may bring in a few dollars, the risk to our events is too great,” she said. “$400 won’t make a difference in the city budget, but it could be too much to keep free events such as the Santa Parade or Halloween Street of Treats alive.”

Arnold further said that if an event like the Sumner Arts Festival shut down, it could negatively affect the fundraising capacity of participating organizations, e.g. sales of cotton candy and popcorn by the Rainbow Girls.

In terms of quantity of events, the downtown association will certainly be the most affected by the special events fees—it sponsors or cosponsors the majority of the 14 events on the schedule. Executive Director Arla Holzschuh said special event fees were typical in other cities for which she has managed downtown development, and that the incorporation of fees made sense in the context of the end of city funding to the downtown association.

“Without money from the city, we’ve had to raise our money,” Holzschuh said in a phone interview. “There are things we never expected. We have money for flower baskets, but don’t have $6,000 for a float. It’s just an extremely inopportune time for the city to charge fees.

“Fees are understandable, but the way things are right now… we’ll either have to cut things or figure something else out.”

Members of council expressed the difficulty they had making the decision to move forward with the fee schedule.

“We’ve thrashed this to death because we really didn’t want to do it,” Steve Allsop said. “We’ve really tried to spread costs and not make it too burdensome.”

The measure carried 5-2.

In other news, the council:

• appointed Frank Bost to the Arts Commission.

• appointed Mike LeMaster to the Planning Commission.