Crowd Inflation at Festival Denied : Art: Board president rejects the claim of some artists that the annual Laguna Beach event drew 1,000 less patrons in 1990 than in 1989.

The board president of the Laguna Festival of the Arts is standing behind the festival’s 1990 attendance figures despite an accusation by some dissatisfied artists that the board falsely reported an attendance increase.

The festival artists, part of a group unhappy with what they believe is the event’s lightweight, tourist image, recently sent a letter challenging the board’s public statement that attendance last summer had risen by about 10,000. The artists asserted that attendance actually dropped by about 1,000, and they are asking for a public correction.

“I don’t feel there is a correction to be made,” board president David Young said Tuesday.

Artist David Sabaroff, who wrote the letter, “has his right to interpret (the attendance figures) his way,” Young said, “and we have our right to interpret them as we see them. . . . (But) he’s wrong and we’re right.”

Young said he spoke only for himself, not the board, and would not explain why he believes that Sabaroff’s calculation is wrong.

Sabaroff, who said he studied festival attendance records from the past four years, said the board’s calculation is wrong because in comparing total 1989 and 1990 attendances, officials included free passes supplied to artists to distribute to their clients.

Because the festival kept no records on the number of such passes redeemed in 1989, including them in the comparison was “inaccurate and misleading,” Sabaroff said in the letter.

Sabaroff’s calculation left out free passes for clients and concluded that attendance had actually dropped by about 1,000, to 67,833.

Revenue figures cited by Sabaroff also indicate that festival box-office receipts have dropped at least $10,000 a year for the last three years, down to $101,720 in 1990.

Sabaroff said Tuesday that he will continue to press the board for a formal response and that if one is not forthcoming, he will consider legal action.

“If the board cannot show me with numbers how they got 10,000 extra people, and they refuse to withdraw their statement (about the increase), then I’m going to have to take some kind of action,” he said. “They are a nonprofit corporation and must be accountable for the statements they make.”

Sabaroff and his fellow members of the Festival of Arts Coalition of Exhibitors (FACE) have accused festival officials of manipulating attendance numbers to deflect criticism that the event’s popularity is dwindling.

Their letter said directors announced the rise in attendance at about the same time that they rejected an artist proposal to hire an outside promoter to improve the festival’s reputation.

Sabaroff said 84 artists signed a petition last summer expressing dissatisfaction that the festival was promoted as a tourist attraction, rather than as a fine-arts event.

He said falling attendance results from the poor image the festival has in the arts community.

FACE members more recently complained that they had been excluded from the process of selecting a new festival general manager and that the chosen candidate, Bruce Lloyd, appears to have no experience in professional arts administration.

Lloyd has been unavailable for comment, but Young said Tuesday that he does not believe that the position requires someone with an arts background. “I felt (Lloyd) was the best qualified of the number of people that applied,” Young said, “and we had people with art backgrounds apply.

“The board is not to be deterred by people who complain,” Young continued. “We feel we have a good board; they are conscientious, and we do what we can for the promotion and appreciation of art in the Laguna Beach area.”

Sabaroff described the board’s reaction as “arrogant.” A sculptor, he has been at odds with festival operators since 1989, when he was among six artists placed on probation for taking part in an “Elvis Presley Memorial Barbecue” on festival grounds. Board members said the artists violated rules prohibiting radios in booths and alcohol on the premises.

The board members “continually refuse our requests for input and just run the festival the way they want to run it,” Sabaroff said. “The time for that is over. Someone has to challenge them.”