Wake board backs cultural festival

RALEIGH -- By a one-vote margin, the Wake commissioners lent their support Monday to planning a new African-American cultural festival to be based in Raleigh.

No specific amount of public money was proposed to support the event, however, and a minority on the county board pledged to oppose spending property tax dollars for the new festival.

"At a time when we're raising taxes and telling people we couldn't find any savings and all in the budget, that we're now going to have, and I'm sorry, basically a $400,000 party if we're not real careful," Commissioner Paul Coble said, "I think the taxpayers would have a fit over that."

Coble joined with fellow Republicans Tony Gurley and Kenn Gardner to vote against the appointment of an executive board to plan the festival, saying they still had questions about how the event might be paid for.

In proposing a framework for getting the project off the ground, Commissioner Harold Webb said the festival would need some "seed money," though he didn't say how much he had in mind.

A vision statement distributed to the board called for the creation of "a multi-cultural experience that celebrates and promotes the legacy and heritage of African-Americans."

Webb compared the event's economic development potential to being something such as the National Black Arts Festival in Atlanta or Winston-Salem's National Black Theatre Festival, both of which draw annual visitors from across the country.

Democrats Webb, Lindy Brown and Betty Lou Ward, joined by Republican board Chairman Joe Bryan, supported the creation of the festival's executive board.

The Mid-Eastern Atlantic Conference men's and women's basketball tournament ended a three-year run at the RBC Center earlier this year and decamped for Winston-Salem. Still, the budget the commissioners approved in June included $200,000 for "MEAC/Community Event Support."

The Raleigh City Council had also granted $200,000 to support the annual basketball tournament, which features teams from historically black colleges.

During the county budget debate this spring, Brown argued against cutting the $200,000, although it was clear then that the tournament had moved on. But Monday she denied she ever suggested the MEAC money be transferred to the proposed festival.

Coble said it would not be fair to other local cultural festivals to simply designate a pool of money for one minority group without a competitive process.

"I can sit here and name a number of cultural events, whether it's the Greek festival or Chinese New Year or the Indian population in the Cary/Apex area, who all have events and do it without public money or who have gone through a process to seek public money from the towns they're in," Coble said.