Should City of Austin Kill This Year's Trail of Lights to Ease Budget Woes?

Photo by Keith Gaddis, originally published in Austinist’s 2007 Trail of Lights Opening Night Slideshow

Amidst a massive budget shortfall, City of Austin is considering whether or not to cancel this year's Trail of Lights at Zilker Park.

Some $2.8 million has already been taken out of the annual budget for the Parks and Recreation Department, which is responsible for putting together the 11-year-old holiday tradition (in its current incarnation as the Trail of Lights). According to KXAN, Trail of Lights costs the city around $800,000 to put on, not including $50,000 that it recoups in parking revenue from attendees, another $9,000 that it takes in donations, and an unspecified amount of corporate sponsorship.

What they're now hoping to assess now are the non-monetary aspects of the festival. The city's executive summary for its fiscal year 2008-2009 budget praises the annual festival for drawing huge crowds—2007 brought in a record 400,000 people over 15 days—and national media attention, from the likes of U.S.A. Today and People Magazine. Before the final verdict is made in September, the Parks and Recreation Board is invited the public to show up at their next meeting and voice their opinion.

If you'd like to weigh in on the matter, the next Parks and Recreation Board meeting takes place next Tuesday, May 26, at Austin City Hall's Boards and Commissions Room. The meeting is open to the public, and starts at 6 p.m.

Contact the author of this article or email tips@austinist.com with further questions, comments or tips.

By Allen Y Chen in News on May 22, 2009 11:45 AM 0 Comments

Comments [rss]

djwammyt

11 year-old tradition? That's way underestimated.

Jon

Charge a few dollars for admission. Problem solved.

For those in the Barton Hills neighborhood: too bad. You live next to the city's largest park. I used to have an apartment in the area too (on the other side of Zilker), and traffic was a pain sometimes, but the Trail of Lights and ACL were regular events before I ever lived there.

Whitney84

Yes, kill it! And never bring it back! As a resident of the Barton Hills neighborhood, I hate this 2-week intrusion on my life. Getting in or out of our neighborhood takes 5 times as long, and getting on Mopac? Ha. Not a chance.

The families are one thing. But the trail of lights also brings out the drunks and stoners galore ("Hey, dude, look at those trippy lights!") and I think myself and all my neighbors would be MUCH happier if we didn't have 30k people illegally parking and milling about our neighborhoods in the dark every night for 2 weeks straight.

And even despite all of that--the trail of lights is lame and hasn't been updated in years. Most of the kids don't even know who half the displays are depicting, as they were created 25 years ago.

Trail of lights=fail. Get rid of it.

Whitney84

Yes! Kill it! As a resident of the Barton Hills neighborhood, the Trail of Lights doesn't equal happy holiday memories for me--it equals two weeks of people thinking their "crafty" by taking all of the parking in our neighborhood instead of riding the shuttles or paying to park. While most of these visitors are probably families, there's also a fair share of drunks and stoners ("Whoa, check out those lights, dude") that are milling about our neighborhood, yelling, littering, or selling ridiculous glowing objects, despite whatever barriers or no-parking signs we attempt to put up.

It also means not being able to get to Mopac--we have to go all the way to 71 or wind through the traffic on Barton Springs to get to downtown and back to 6th to get to Mopac--what a hassle!

So, yes, kill it, kill it violently. Truth be told, it's not even that cool and hasn't changed in years. Get rid of it!

Donatella

Too bad they already charge for riding the city bus. I'm a UT student and I should get free fare, but I still had to pay

tim

Actually it sounds like they're just charging too little for parking. Charge $40/car to park at Zilker, then charge $5/car to park in the garages. If you take the city bus and walk into the park it's free. They'd probably go a long way towards recouping their costs.

seth

How about shutting down some of these 'cultural centers' that were built with the last bond elections? Sure, the bonds covered the cost of initial construction, but the city budget has to cover the overhead and maintenance forever. At $500k per center per year, that adds up real quick.

The fire department is a good place to cut costs as well. Unlike the police and teachers, our firefighters aren't overwhelmed with the work we're asking them to perform.

Seth

Allen Y Chen

If you consider that the average total attendance is anywhere from 300-400k, they could probably break even if they charged $2-4 a head. $8 for a family of four isn't a whole lot to ask for, IMO--even just getting into a park like Emma Long costs that much.

juliet77

I love the trail of lights, but that is a lot of money. Could they recoup most of the cost by charging admission? I'd pay a reasonable ticket price, say $5 a head?

pop-sav

Maybe they could drop this crap fest and give the $800,000 to the teachers, the fire department, the road repair crews, back to the taxpayers...