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MERRITT HERALD FREE
THURSDAY, MAY 24, 2012 • MERRITT NEWSPAPERS
Mayors protest ‘downloading’ Roline attends Mayors’ Caucus By Phillip Woolgar THE HERALD
reporter@merrittherald.com
Mountainfest organizers announced the 2012 festival has been cancelled due to low ticket sales. The festival was revived last year, but ticket sales were low and this cancellation is the second in three years. Active Mountain Entertainment has issued an apology to festival patrons, volunteers and sponsors. Jade Swartzberg/Herald
Music festival cancelled again Active Mountain calls off Mountainfest 2012 because of low ticket sales By Jade Swartzberg THE HERALD
newsroom@merrittherald.com
With two months to go before country musicians were set to take the stage, the Merritt Mountain Music Festival has been cancelled due to low ticket sales, announced Active Mountain Entertainment on Tuesday. “It is with deep regret that the management of the Merritt Mountain Music Festival has come to the sad decision to cancel the 2012 edition of Mountainfest,” read an announcement posted on the festival website. The announcement cited slow ticket sales as the reason for the cancellation. “Although ticket sales had shown the promise of a solid attendance
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number when going on sale back in October of 2011, sales slowed down considerably from then on and have not rebounded thereafter,” it read. Despite a revival in 2011, this is the second time in three years organizers have cancelled the festival. Mountainfest, which drew as many as 140,000 people over five days at its peak, was halted after 17 years in 2010 because of financial concerns caused by a decline in attendance coupled with the high cost of performers. After a comeback last year, festival co-founder Claude Lelievre remained optimistic despite low attendance and said the festival was ready to grow. In October 2011, Lelievre told the Herald festival plans for 2012 were three months
ahead of schedule. The company also posted the cancellation notice to the Merritt Mountain Music Festival Facebook page, and while many fans were supportive, others suggested a “poor line-up” was to blame for the low ticket sales. The line-up included Gary Allen and Gord Bamford, but many of the performers were relatively unknown. Lelievre responded to criticism on Facebook and said since September he has tried to secure a “huge name” headliner for the festival by making offers on Miranda Lambert, Keith Urban, Reba McIntire and Sheryl Crow among others, but was unable to close any of them. “This has been the most challenging year that I have experi-
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enced in the past 35 years of my being in the entertainment business,” he wrote, adding that though he was not disappointed with the roster, he had no other option but to cancel the festival. “This festival simply cannot be produced with only a few hundred fans wishing for it to continue.” The cancellation notice thanks patrons, volunteers and sponsors who “historically made what Mountainfest meant to hundreds of thousands of country music fans over the past 18 years.” The notice says nothing of the future, but concludes with “good bye to all.” The company said those who already purchased tickets for the festival should call their credit card provider and request a refund.
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B.C. municipalities can’t keep up with the constant downloading of expenses brought on by cost-cutting provincial and federal governments, Merritt Mayor Susan Roline says. The elected head of Merritt and 85 other mayors met in Penticton from Wednesday to Friday last week for the inaugural BC Mayors’ Caucus to discuss the challenges B.C. municipalities face. “We are all seeing the crunch of the constant downloading of the other two orders of government and I think we need to address it because we can’t keep going the way it is,” she said. “We can’t just keep raising taxes every time they download something onto us that they’re actually collecting the taxes for.” These include issues that should be funded provincially such as health care, mental illness, cold-weather shelter and water testing, said Roline. Open dialogue with B.C. Premier Christy Clark and ministers is needed before the crunch becomes unmanageable, she said. The mayors are scheduled to attend the Union of B.C. Municipalities conference in Victoria this fall. Caucus Steering Committee member Mayor Shari Green of Prince George said the meetings helped communicate a clear message. “This was an incredibly beneficial meeting where it became evident that B.C. mayors have, for the first time, come together as peers with a single voice. This is a new day in the way we as mayors will move forward for
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