Summerfest sunk by funding crisis

Youth music festival Summerfest has been canned for 2014, because of a lack of funding.

Creative Tauranga chief executive Tracey Rudduck-Gudsell was "gutted" families and young people would miss out on the popular alcohol-free musical festival, due to be held in February, but said the financial risk for the charitable trust was too high.

The festival committee, which had spent "hundreds of hours" working on the 2014 event, met yesterday but, despite further donations from the public and support from Tauranga City Council, would fall short of the amount needed to host the festival at Mount Maunganui's Blake Park.

"Unless someone jumps out of the woodwork. I can't pull it off for February," she said.

In October the former Tauranga City Council voted not to give any financial support to the festival but Mayor Stuart Crosby and chief executive Garry Poole later decided to give the festival $20,000 cash and offer a further $8000 in council services.

Organisers had asked the former council for $43,000 but ended up with no cash while organisers of the Battle of Gate Pa commemorations wanted $50,000 and received $32,000.

Mr Crosby said news of the cancellation was "very disappointing".

"Obviously, there's been two successful ones but concerts of that nature are high-risk and I can understand the trust not being willing to take that risk."

He admitted the council had been sub-standard in its support of local events for the past few years, something being discussed by the new council.

Summerfest 2015 would have his full support as one of the few city events that was alcohol-free and family-friendly, he said.

Ms Rudduck-Gudsell vowed the festival would be back in 2015.

"It's the only event for our youth and it's a great event and a great model," she said.

Earlier this week, a group came forward offering $20,000 towards the event, an offer she hoped would remain in 2015.

Other commercial organisations had indicated they would support a 2015 festival but had not been able to accommodate it in their budgets this year.

The event's cancellation would also be disappointing for local acts who had been looking forward to performing and the three unnamed headline acts, she said.