Bottom line, event was big financial failure. The Board says it did its job putting in place, for the most part, checks and balances that could have prevented the financial disaster. The former CEO says he did what he was supposed to - it just didn't go as planned.
CEDAR RAPIDS — The former chief executive of GO Cedar Rapids refused to cut expenses as “newbo evolve” neared contributing to a $2.3 million loss for the event, the board’s chairman John Myers said on Friday.
The board was unaware of and didn’t approve several expenses, such as the last-minute signing of rock band The Wallflowers to open for Kelly Clarkson on the event’s opening night, Myers said, and top act Maroon 5 was paid much more than it should have been. Things like stickers on the street and lockers outside the concert grounds could have also been cut to minimize losses, he said.
“A prime example was the signing of The Wallflowers because there was no contractual obligation to sign them as opener for the festival,” Myers said, declining to say how much individual acts were paid, citing contractual restrictions. “That was made the last week before the festival. It should have been avoided. It should not have happened.”
He cited “excessive spending on unnecessary items” and breaking protocol in signing contracts as factors when asked why the event lost so much money. The board is in process of finding a firm to conduct a full audit of the festival, he said.
As more details are released about newbo evolve — part music festival, part speaker series, part wellness, fashion, design and culinary series on Aug. 3-5 in downtown Cedar Rapids and the New Bohemia District — the oversight board continues to distance itself from the decision-making that led to the loss. Myers describes an engaged board that questioned information from the beginning, and he put the blame squarely on former chief executive Aaron McCreight and Scott Tallman, the creative director of newbo evolve.
Others question why the board allowed the tourism bureau to take on such a great risk with little experience in putting on such an grand event.
“They are playing with other people’s money, and it makes you wonder if these board members would put their own money up for something so risky,” said Daniel Borochoff, president of Charity Watch, a Chicago-based watchdog in the nonprofit sector. “Saying they got bad information says they didn’t do enough to get their own information.”