Planners Cancel Picnic for Conejo Valley Days : Festivities: They cite the costs of the opening event, saying it was either eliminate it or cut back the actual five-day celebration.

Citing financial problems, organizers of Conejo Valley Days have canceled a popular picnic, scheduled March 20, that traditionally had launched the spring celebration.

*

Thousands attended the picnic in past years, but it became too large a drain on the Conejo Valley Days budget, organizers said Thursday. The picnic costs the volunteer organizing committee $6,000, said Pete Turpel, Conejo Valley Days chairman.

“I really don’t feel comfortable about this,” Turpel said of the cancellation. “Nobody feels good about it.”

Instead of the giant picnic, volunteers are scrambling to put together a smaller event to fill the gap, said Bob Rickards, chairman of this year’s grand marshal contest. If the plan comes together, the event would be put on by this year’s two grand marshal contestants as a fund-raiser, Rickards said.

Nominees compete to raise the most money for charity to win the honor of presiding over the festival.

The smaller event would not have the array of food, souvenirs and beer booths as past picnics, Rickards said. But it would feature entertainment and serve as an opportunity for families to come together and celebrate, he said.

“We’re working on it,” Rickards said. “The bottom line is we need to have a very low overhead.”

In the giant picnic’s heyday, as many as 4,500 residents turned out to eat chicken barbecued by the Conejo Valley Rotary and meet contestants for Conejo Valley Days grand marshal, said Steve Rubinstein, executive director of the Conejo Valley Chamber of Commerce.

There was no admission charge, but food and souvenirs were sold. The Rotary gave 5% of the proceeds from food sales to the Conejo Valley Days committee, but that only amounted to about $500, Turpel said.

Meanwhile, costs for park rental, insurance and security rose to $6,500.

“Our costs have gone up,” Rubinstein said. “It’s purely monetary.”

The Western-style Conejo Valley Days festival will go on as scheduled April 27 to May 1. It may even net a small profit to provide seed money to the volunteer committee that will take over festival planning after this year without the chamber’s guidance, Turpel said.

In the past few years, only about 800 or 1,000 people have turned out for the picnic, as bad weather and shifting locations made it less appealing, Turpel said.

“We probably weren’t the best promoters,” he said.

The organizers did not realize until recently that they had underbudgeted expenses for this year’s festival and had to find something to cut. The only other option was to cut two days from the festival’s five-day run, Turpel said.

By axing the picnic, the organizing committee expects to keep its $465,000 budget from spilling into the red, Turpel said. The cost of setting up the festival’s beer and food tents, rides and commercial booths is made up with ticket sales and a percentage from concessions, he added.

Two years ago, the festival lost money and the committee still is paying off that debt. For that reason, organizers had considered cutting the picnic for the past two years, but no one had the heart to do it, Turpel said.

“The reason we kept it was because it was such a tradition,” he said.