Council Budget Chair Says Everett Losing $500k A Year On Downtown Theatre

Editor’s Update 12:50 PM Thursday May 10th: This morning MyEverettNews.com requested and received the report given to Everett City Council budget chair Scott Murphy regarding the income and expenses of the Everett Performing Arts Center going back to 2009. Here is a copy of that information. Click chart to enlarge.

On the Wednesday night Everett City Council agenda item 8 appeared to be a pretty routine extension of an agreement between the city and the Village Theatre.

Since 2014 the City of Everett has had an agreement with Village Theatre to manage the Everett Performing Arts Center, present theatrical productions and provide theatrical education and performances for and by children.

The current agreement expires this August and the action requested was to extend the agreement another year. Recently the Everett Parks and Community Services Department took over management of the agreement between the city and Village Theatre. The agreement had been managed by and rates set by Everett’s Director of Economic Development Lanie McMullin who retired in February. The department said they wanted another year to look at working closer with Village Theatre and research best business practices specific to Performing Arts Center Management Agreements.

When time for approval for the extension came up budget chair Scott Murphy said he just found out that the city had lost $2.5 million dollars over the last five years. “I have some real questions and concerns,” said Murphy. “It appears we have been paying three hundred thousand dollars a year for the opportunity to lose five hundred thousand dollars.” Murphy then asked for the council to table the item for further study of the contract and documents he had just received from the city Treasurer. Jeff Moore also asked for a short time to study the issue while council member Brenda Stoncipher pushed for the extension to move ahead. She mentioned that the previous contract was much worse with the city paying almost twice as much in management fees.

Council President Paul Roberts then worked out an agreement for the city administration to come back with a complete overview of the costs and opportunities to change the agreement with Village Theatre in order to get a handle on the losses. That overview is expected within the next 30 days. Jeff Moore reminded the council that the city has to make up ten million dollars in deficits and that there are not just a few but a lot of cuts that will have to be made to programs that many people like in order to not go backwards on staffing gains that have been recently made in public safety.