It seemed like a simple approval of a festival permit to close a couple of city blocks for Goombay, but the City commissioners found themselves Tuesday at the epicenter of a dispute between two groups, each saying they represent the best interests of the Bahama Village community.
The Bahama Village Business Association (BVBA)— whose representative Veronica Stafford has registered the trademark "Goombay" in her name— applied for the permit, but the long standing organizers of the event, the Neighborhood Improvement Association (NIA), is not ready to hand it over to a newcomer from Trinidad. Nor has the black neighborhood group shown any eagerness to work out a deal with the businesswoman and her 50-percent black, 50-percent white board of directors.
Commissioner Tom Oosterhoudt asked the BVBA to explain thoroughly to the public that the Goombay festival application represented "not just a one woman coup d'etat" by the entrepreneurial Stafford, but a business plan drawn up by a serious 77-member merchants group that had been meeting every Tuesday for months.
Stafford said her group— comprised of business owners and residents of the area, including Historic Tours of America and the Bahama Conch Community Land Trust— have books open to the public and will split the revenue a generous 25-75-percent with the community. This could mean as much as $92,000 to City coffers, she said. The way the event has been organized in the past, with booths going for $300 each, Miami and beyond to sell their wares here. "I want the money to stay in the community," she told the Commission.
But it does, said the NIA's Ken Sullivan. He said even the men who stand on the sidewalks and drink beer are put to work during Goombay. He defended the festival as a tremendous venue for the non-profits and noted: "Bahama Village has more non-profit corporations per capita than just about anywhere else in the world. I know because I sit on most of the boards."
And apparently they are busy not making a profit, every one of them. They gave the city a paltry $2500 per Goombay festival noted mayor Jimmy Weekley, and he said that when they are asked if they can do better for the City, they just shrug and say, "oh well."
David Paul Horan, representing the NIA's interest in the absence of their attorney Michael Halpern (who is out of town attending to his wife's health crisis) said he believed the NIA's "commonlaw trademark" rights would prevail if it went to court. He asked that the application approval be postponed to allow both parties to work something out.
Commissioner Carmen Turner sought reassurances from Stafford that her group would provide full financial disclosure, then noted "You can't make people work together who don't' want to work together."
"We are not asking for three strikes, just two," said Horan to Turner, who said she thought it was "unfair" to keep postponing Stafford's application.
Merlin Curry took up for Stafford and the BVBA, saying they had waited a long time for something like this, and urged that they "give new people a chance to do their thing." He said black Conchs are becoming an endangered species because of their community blight, and "I would not like to be an endangered species any more. The new business association is good. I would like to see people come together and make this thing work."
Mayor Weekley chided the NIA for its lackadaisical past performance and said he was ready to support the Business Association. But in the end, he joined Commissioner McCoy and the majority in voting to table the application for one last time, to give the parties a chance to work things out.