A graph presented at the Oct. 21 city council meeting illustrated year-over-year costs for city events such as El Tigre-Fest, Juneteenth, Pride and the Fourth of July. The total price of all four events has increased by more than $250,000 since 2021.
The graph grouped together event staff expenses, advertising and activities and showed that events like the Fourth of July and El Tigre were each costing the city over $100,000 to put on.
“The costs for these events are continuing to grow each year, without matching revenue growth,” Assistant City Manager Nicole Hendrix told the council. “Prior to 2021, the city did not host any of these events, so a lot of these events are new in the last five or so years, and we’ve taken that on without that matching revenue source.”
Bigger budgets have gone towards activities like the drone show at recent Fourth of July events. 2024’s Fourth of July festival was the most expensive in the city’s history, with a total price of $142,933, according to the city’s cost analysis.
While prices increased year over year for every event besides Pride (which cost nearly $10,000 less this year than in 2024), attendance reportedly dropped or remained the same. This year’s Fourth of July event saw a loss of 2,000 attendees, while El Tigre Fest lost about 2,400.
Digital Communications Coordinator and founder of El Tigre Fest, Leandro Barrientos, reviewed some of the costs with the council, highlighting the importance of the events and their popularity to the city.
“There’s also a strong connection between these events and economic opportunity,” Barrientos said. “They help create the conditions for new businesses to grow and thrive here in Tigard. I’ve had the privilege of working with entrepreneurs, many from Spanish-speaking communities, who completed their very first business license after participating in a city event.”
While the council acknowledged the many benefits of the four events, statistics illustrated rising costs and declining partnership support over the years, with fewer event sponsors stepping up to help finance events. Hendrix attributed this phenomenon to similar budget constraints on the side of the sponsors.
Hendrix said that Tigard had explored options for curbing the increasing costs of events, like expanding sponsorship, selling merchandise at events and being mindful of prices going towards equipment and event activities.
“There is a very real budgetary constraint,” City Management Analyst and Overall Project Manager Alex Richardson told the council.
“This has been a tough year for everybody,” Councilor Heather Robbins said. “I do have some concerns that costs are going up up up and at several of the events attendance was down…Juneteenth attendance has been flat for the last couple of years at only 150 people, yet the cost has more than doubled since we started.”
Councilor Jake Schlack echoed Robbin’s concerns, saying that he was “really concerned” about the increasingly large amount of resources the events needed to function.
“To put this in perspective, folks, we’re at the point where we’re spending as much money on these events as we are on our entire year’s worth of social services and community events grants across the entire city…I think it’s really excessive that we spend $80,000 on a drone show at Fourth of July, no matter how beautifully crafted it was.”
Schlack advocated for scaling back events and said he would like to see funds be reallocated into homeless services, backfilling cut police and public works funds, or numerous other city services.
“We need to look at each event separately and really cater how much we’re spending,” Robbins said. “I’m not saying cancel anything because I do love all the events.”
Other councilors disagreed with cutting event funding completely, but said that they could be scaled back to conserve the city budget.
“I think there’s still a huge opportunity for sponsorship, we just haven’t done that in the past,” Councilor Jeanette Shaw said.
Tigard Mayor Yi-Kang Hu concluded the discussion, saying that he “strongly encouraged” the City Management Department to find additional sponsors for the events as soon as possible.
“I still want to keep them, but if we can’t get sponsorship I’m okay with scaling back,” Hu said.
City event organizers agreed to start looking for sponsorship and report back to council once they were closer to event season.
Event dates for next year are currently Pride on May 23, Juneteenth on June 20, Fourth of July on July 4 and El Tigre on Oct. 3, according to the City Management Department, who dropped the new dates at the end of their meeting with councilors.
