Tacoma's First Night celebration canceled

TACOMA, Wash. — First Night, Tacoma’s annual New Year’s Eve celebration, has been canceled. Its organizers said they don’t have enough money to put on the show the city deserves.

Theater District Associates, the organizers of the event, said there wasn’t enough money to pay artists and technical staff as well as rent for venues and equipment.

“It was unlikely we were going to meet our secure funding and unanimously voted at the board meeting in November to go dark,” president Naarah McDonald said Tuesday.

Board members became concerned about a budget shortfall in late summer, McDonald said. They gave themselves a deadline of Nov. 15 to secure funding. By late October it became clear they wouldn’t make the budget.

The festival gets one third of $130,000 budget from the city, one third from vendor sales and one third from donations, corporate sponsorships and grants.

It was that last category — and the only one that is funded before the festival — that was coming in about 50 percent short, McDonald said.

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Though the outdoor performances are free to the public, the artists are paid for their work, McDonald said. Board members worried they wouldn’t have enough money to compensate them.

“It really is about being fiscally responsible,” McDonald said Tuesday.

Following the decision to go dark, they group immediately began notifying artists and community partners, McDonald said.

The board now will put its efforts into fundraising for next year’s festival.

“With the intent of being back bigger and stronger and more engaging for the community,” McDonald said.

Board member Steph Farber said Tuesday that the board rejected having a scaled-down First Night.

“It’s much better to have a first-rate celebration for the community than something that will make people less likely to want to come back year after year,” Farber said.

First Night celebrated its 25th year in 2017. Kicking off with the “World’s Shortest Parade,” the annual event has both free outdoor and paid indoor activities in downtown Tacoma, including music, dance and theater. Admission for this year was set at $15 for the all-ages event.

Over the years, festival goers came to expect quirky and unusual features at the alcohol-free celebration, such as a man riding a giant chicken, heads rolling down a street, a night circus, a car-horn symphony, human-powered sled races and an ice walk.

This year’s now canceled schedule had singers, dancers, musicians, actors and more.

Financial problems and cancellations are hardly new to First Night. Tacoma began celebrating the event in 1992. The event was canceled in both 2005 and 2006 after Dec. 31, 2004’s festival left a $50,000 debt.

When it resumed in 2007, the festival’s budget was $75,000, down from $125,000 in 2004.

The current budget includes about $50,000 in button sales, most of which comes on or just before Dec. 31st.

“We have one blizzard, and the $50,000 isn’t there,” Farber said. “So, we can never count on that income.”

A change in production staff led to some of this year’s problems, McDonald said.

“It put us behind in doing corporate sponsorship outreach,” McDonald said.

But the donor community in Tacoma has changed as well, Farber said. Private corporations have left town or changed their donation philosophies.

McDonald and Farber hope the recent passage of Tacoma Creates, an arts-funding proposition, will make up for the shortfall in the future.

Raising admission prices is something the board wants to avoid.

“We want to make it inexpensive enough so that families can come and celebrate as a community,” he said.

One of Farber’s annual joys, he said, was seeing the diversity of ages and ethnic backgrounds of the celebrants.

“They are just having a heck of time celebrating together,” Farber said. “Which is what I think communities need to experience.”

On Tuesday, the festival’s website clock was still counting down the days and hours to the celebration, but links to purchase entry buttons were disabled.

Click here to read the full story on the Tacoma News Tribune.

Tacoma News Tribune