Iconic Busselton festival will survive: organisers

The Festival of Busselton committee is without a president four months out from the event and has been forced to dip into its reserves to fund a paid co-ordinator.

The committee has also lost financial support from the City of Busselton for its closing night concert, but organisers deny the iconic month-long event is in jeopardy.

Immediate past president Bernie Masters told the Times in January the committee would seek a corporate naming sponsor to the tune of $35,000 to fund the co-ordinator role, but admitted it had been unsuccessful.

“I went to a number of local larger businesses and, unfortunately, they were either already totally committed with their sponsorship dollars or had a corporate philosophy of making their sponsorship dollars spread more widely through the community, ” he said.

“We took a decision to use our accumulated reserves to pay for a co-ordinator.

“It’s cost us a fair amount of money, but the job has grown so much over the last five years that we do need a co-ordinator to lessen the load on the president.”

Mr Masters was confident once the committee hired a co-ordinator — for which applications closed last week — potential presidents would see the role as “much more manageable”.

He acknowledged the committee couldn’t keep dipping into its reserve funds, but said the festival’s future was not in danger.

“Courtesy of the City of Busselton, Lotterywest and the smaller sponsors we have we’ll always be able to have a festival that has most popular events regardless, ” he said.

“The corporate sponsorship will simply allow us to have more events during January.”

It comes as the committee is being forced to scale back its closing night concert after losing sponsorship from the City, which was worth $25,000 this year.

City community and commercial services director Naomi Searle said those funds were provided to celebrate the festival’s 50th year.

The City will still provide the festival with $6000 a year for the next three years and in-kind funding valued at more than $13,000.

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