Cuts Threaten Cinco De Mayo Festival’s Size

When Ruben Castro was growing up in Moorpark in the 1930s, the annual Cinco de Mayo festivals would draw about half of the city’s 1,500 or so residents.

Women in traditional Mexican costumes performed folk dances on an outdoor stage set up near High Street. A festival queen was chosen. And everyone danced in the streets.

“We went the whole nine yards,” said Castro, 62.

The festivals Castro remembers were sponsored by the local Roman Catholic church. The city took over the event three years ago. Last year, the celebration grew to a daylong event drawing at least 600 people.

But after allegations that city parks commissioners mishandled finances for the event last year, the City Council slashed funding for the festival from $12,000 to $2,000.

Now, it looks as if this year’s Cinco de Mayo celebration will be substantially smaller than last year’s and those of the years when Castro grew up.

A local nonprofit group that runs the yearly Labor Day picnic and other citywide festivities offered to sponsor the Cinco de Mayo celebration this year if the city would increase its contribution from $2,000 to $3,500 to match $3,500 put up by the group.

But on Wednesday, the Moorpark City Council refused, voting to pitch in only another $200, for a total of $2,200. Council members said they did not want to take money from the general fund in the current climate of economic uncertainty.

As a result, the nonprofit group has pulled out, and the Cinco de Mayo festival this year will be drastically scaled back.

Some Latino community leaders said the council’s decision is likely to create disappointment and resentment among Latinos, who form about 25% of the city’s population.

“Is $1,500 really worth” the bad feelings, asked Pamela Castro, a school board trustee and member of the Moorpark Youth Activities Committee, the group that had offered to organize this year’s festival.

“This will be remembered for years,” she said.

A local Latino educator who did not want to be identified said Latino residents may feel slighted by the council’s decision.

“I think the message it sends is you’re not important enough for us to budget support for you,” the educator said.

A group of Latino residents still plans to hold an evening dance, and city officials are scrambling to put on some daytime activities for children.

But several Latinos active in community affairs said the smaller event, which would not include the mariachi dancers or other live entertainment planned by the Moorpark Youth Activities Committee, will not attract a cross-section of the city’s population.

Cultural festivals such as celebrations of Mexico’s independence day are “a way of getting people together so we can understand that we’re all neighbors,” the Latino educator said.

But Councilman Roy E. Talley Jr. said the council’s action was based solely on economics.

“I wish we could have found more money,” Talley said. But “there’s no fat.”

The council cut the funding for Cinco de Mayo after last year’s event cost about $3,000 more than the $12,000 that had been budgeted, recouping only $4,000. Ultimately, the council fired the director of the city’s parks commission for overspending and not keeping an accurate record of expenditures and ticket sales.

Next year, the council may be able to budget additional funds for Cinco de Mayo, Talley said, adding that he hopes that private donors will step forward this year to help the Moorpark Youth Activities Committee put on the event.

But Vickie McGowan, who works with the nonprofit group, said there is not enough time to solicit private donations and book performers.

She said the Moorpark Youth Activities Committee needed the additional $1,500 from the city to ensure that the festival was successful enough for the group to recoup its $3,500 contribution. The group had not planned to charge admission, but to make money mainly through refreshments.