Shared at the Tuesday night City Council meeting:

First of all, as someone who lives and works in Oakland, I appreciate the good work you all are doing to try to balance our city’s budget—I know it can’t be easy.

You know, the number one paid tourist attraction in the Bay Area is San Francisco cable cars. Children’s Fairyland—in Oakland—is number 24, with 166,000 visitors each year; over 40% of whom are from Oakland.

At Fairyland, we’ve worked very hard to increase our earned income over the years—we were even at a bridal fair last weekend selling the park as a great venue for a fairytale wedding! We do this because we face daunting challenges in fundraising: our biggest grant—from the San Francisco Foundation—went from $25,000 to $5000 a year. We just learned that the event we hold each year for 2600 Oakland Head Start kids and their families lost their grant. We’re going to figure out a way to continue the event, but it will be in an environment where both foundation and corporate funding is dramatically down.

The City’s proposed cut to Fairyland is huge for us, but it represents less than one quarter of one percent of what you are cutting to balance the budget for the lost redevelopment funds. Two years ago the other cultural institutions received a new source of revenue through the hotel tax. Fairyland did not. So not only are we suffering a greater share of the burden, but we’re doing so without having received the benefit of the hotel tax.

We believe we bring much value to the City of Oakland: presenting the image that our city cares about our youngest kids; about literacy and cultivating imaginations.

Not all of our city’s main cultural institutions are being cut during this budget go-round; we respectfully ask that Fairyland’s 40% cut be rescinded.
Thank you.