This year there will be two Tet festivals for the Little Saigon community in Southern California. Jan 31-Feb 2, 2014 @ Garden Grove Park hosted by Vietnamese Community of Southern California vncsctetfestival.org Feb 7-Feb 9, 2014 @ OC Fairgrounds hosted by UVSA tetfestival.org Consequently, the Los Angeles Tet Festival has deferred to two weeks after the Lunar New Year, Feb 15-Feb 16 latetfest.net/?page_id=25 This divergence was the result of local politics, politicians wanting to extract money to pander to their constituents and a little naivete on the part of the student organization believing that paying the bills was enough to keep them from being tapped as a supplementary revenue source of local government. A cursory glance at publicly available tax records (charitynavigator.org/index.cfm?bay=search.profile&ein=330133420#.UuU9S07TnqQ) show that between 2009 to 2012, UVSA has pulled in average gross revenues of about $500K from the annual tet festival with an average net income of $250K. Of this net income, about $100K is used annually for operational expenses and (presumably) other collegiate experience expenses; another $70-$100K is used for community grants with the balance of about $40-50K carried over and added to the net assets of the organization. The five officers for the organization receive no salary and change from year-to-year. By May 2012, the net assets of UVSA had grown to $266,306, all cash on hand. Undoubtedly, it was that amount that some members of the Garden Grove City Council had their eyes fixated upon and willing to levy in excess of costs to the city. Understandably, with this annual festival serving as the groups sole revenue, giving in to the demands of the city would have eliminated this carry-over of cash for UVSA and stunted the flexibility they would have for growth or new initiatives.
Posted on: Fri, 31 Jan 2014 04:13:17 +0000
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