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Letter: STC 'bail out' shows incompetent spending from city council

Decision 'speaks volumes to their willingness to embrace self-delusion'
stc
Letter-writer Tommy Boyuk isn't impressed with city council's $200,000 bail-out of Sudbury Theatre Centre. (Supplied)

There’s a saying that goes “poor planning on your part does not necessarily constitute an emergency on mine.”

Sudbury Theatre Centre has been in a steady downward spiral financially for four years.

Prior to 2014 fiscal year, STC had a surplus of approximately $300,000.

So, in order for them four years later to be in a deficit position of approximately $700,000, they would have had to have lost a total of $1,000,000 in just over four years.

To be sure that is a very significant yearly loss for any organization, especially so for an arts group such as STC.
From the outside looking in, it appears there have been some serious lapse of oversight on the part of the board of directors, coupled with an incompetent management team.

In the absence of a very detailed plan on how the current board of directors and management are going to turn this money-losing production company around, any bail out, emergency or otherwise is a complete and utter waste of our tax dollars. 

How would city council know if $200,000 is sufficient to turn the ship around and is there a willingness in the community to donate a substantial sum of funds to meet the additional several-hundred-thousand-dollar shortfall?

Coun. Jocelyn Landry Altman is the only councillor that’s on the right side of this issue. There is no “emergency” so dire that council should abdicate their most important responsibility, the informed and prudent expenditure of our tax dollars in the most transparent manner possible.

Are the arts important? Yes, absolutely. Should the city, as a whole, support and encourage growth in the arts community? Again, yes.

Should all the checks and balances that are in place to ensure public funds are expended in an informed and transparent manner be subverted, because of an “emergency” that was four years in the making?

The answer to that is a resounding NO.

That this council would buy a pig and $200,000 worth of lipstick, and then expect that it will magically transform into a beautiful swan speaks volumes to their willingness to embrace self-delusion by making an unsupported decision on the expenditure of $200,000 in public funds.

This “bail out” simply does not pass the smell test.

Most of the arts groups that receive annual grants from the city have seen cuts to those grants, some are also running deficits, but by exercising good oversight on the part of their boards, and prudent decisions by their management teams, they are in control of their financial obligations and continue to operate in a professional and competent manner.

All arts groups have been weathering the same financial storm that STC has, that the STC is in such dire financial straits is entirely of their own making.

For this council to wave all due diligence in expending public funds, under the guise of a self-inflicted financial “emergency” on the part of the STC, is at best incompetent.

Tommy Boyuk
Sudbury