It was billed as one of the biggest live music events to hit the central west, but on Thursday afternoon Forbes Shire Councillors voted to suspend Vanfest 2018 and implement the recommendations from an auditor’s report into the event.
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The second day of the 2017 festival was cancelled after excessive amounts of rain hit Forbes, forcing refunds to ticketholders and debate to rage over the event, which had drawn a lineup that included the likes of Amy Shark and the Thundamentals.
The auditor’s recommendations include council formally assessing and documenting how licence and event management agreements for Vanfest comply with the requirements of the procurement policy; a more rigorous budgeting process; a review of policies and procedures for negotiation of significant commercial arrangements; and a review of risk assessment for events managed by third parties.
The vote to suspend was passed five votes to one with councillor Phyllis Miller the only member of the chamber voting to proceed.
Cr Miller argued that VanFest could be held in 2018 parallel to council carrying out the auditor’s recommendations.
Speaking in favour of council suspending the event for this year Cr Susan Chau pointed out that she was a fan of VanFest.
“The problem is the lack of due process,” Cr Chau said.
“You can’t have an event and then come up with a budget.
“We have to account to ratepayers for every single cent, there are issues that have to be addressed,” Cr Chau said.
“You can’t patch holes in the boat, leaks need to be patched before going ahead,” Cr Chau said of the problems identified by the auditor.
Cr Steve Karaitiana, who seconded the recommendation to suspend Vanfest, said “we were never against it”.
However he said council had “been mislead, given little information” and when council had been given information had been asked “to make a quick decision”.
“We need time with something like this. That was a continual problem with VanFest,” Cr Karaitiana said.
Speaking strongly in favour of holding VanFest again this year in parallel with the auditor’s recommendations Cr Miller pointed out the council hadn’t even spent one per cent of its entire budget on VanFest.
“We have over one million people looking at the (VanFest) website. That kind of thing doesn’t happen overnight,” she said.
Cr Miller went on to point out that major country events like the Deniliquin Ute Muster and the Parkes Elvis Festival both ran at a loss for many years with support from their councils.
“Giving it a year off, we might as well sign the death warrant for VanFest,” she said.
