Santa Clarita / Antelope Valley : City to Seek FEMA Funds for Cowboy Poetry Festival

City officials are asking the federal government for $13,000 to help pay for the relocation of an upcoming festival that was displaced by the Northridge earthquake.

The city will pay $15,000 to hold next month’s Cowboy Poetry, Music and Film Festival at the historic Melody Ranch Motion Picture Studio in Newhall. The event was originally slated for the William S. Hart High School auditorium at a cost of $2,000, but had to be moved after the auditorium was severely damaged in the quake.

The city is applying to the Federal Emergency Management Agency for funds to cover the difference. But some residents are questioning the legitimacy of asking FEMA to help pay for the new venue.

“I think it’s just outrageous,” said Deborah Luck, a Canyon Country resident. “Those funds are supposed to be for people who still don’t have a roof over their heads.”

City spokeswoman Gail Foy said city officials would be remiss in their duties if they did not ask for assistance. If FEMA does not pick up the tab for the new location, the additional expense would come out of the city’s general fund, Foy said.

“We look at this as an additional legitimate expense caused as a result of the earthquake,” Foy said. “We ask for anything that we can possibly ask for, but that doesn’t mean we’re going to get it.”

She defended moving the three-day festival, which begins March 25, to the famous movie ranch, saying alternatives would have cost the city more. She said holding the event in a tent with the necessary acoustic properties would cost $27,000, and that canceling the festival would result in the loss of between $30,000 and $40,000 in advances paid to entertainers.

“This way, we’re planning to break even,” she said.

But Luck, who has unsuccessfully lobbied the city to install street lights on a stretch of Soledad Canyon Road where a woman was recently murdered, said the city should not be spending money on the festival at all.

“It’s inappropriate,” she said. “I can tell you we need a lot of things in this town a lot more than we need a cowboy poetry festival.”