 The Mumford & Sons Gentlemen of the Road concert was a big success, earning the city nearly $54,000 in fees, but raising some questions about holding events like this on a regular basis. Last week Mayor Brennan, City Councilor Kevin Donahue and City staff held a community meeting to give residents of Munjoy Hill some information about the concert and to listen to their concerns. Brian Knoblock spoke with Councilor Donahue about the feedback they received. Councilor Donahue, you spent a lot of time listening here today. What did you hear? I heard a lot of different things, but I heard people who were pleasantly surprised with how well the operation of the event went, but with a lot of good critique about small items and large items that could go better, should we entertain this sort of event in the future? There was a fair amount of discussion about the use of public facilities for private purposes. What did you hear about that? Some analogies were drawn from public facilities, is this the same as renting out the Merrill Auditorium? Clearly it's not. There's an opportunity cost to the neighborhood and to the public at large when the park is not available for everybody's benefit. So it's important to document that there is a different public benefit that's easily understood. In this instance we make arguments about economic benefit, about multiplier effects, about the nightlife benefiting for that night, hotels, bars, restaurants, all having a good day. I think one of the things that we necessarily need to see is a positive impact is a positive impact for the neighborhood. The impacts, negative impacts on the neighborhood were really confined to loss of the park for a day or two. The positive impacts we'll see in the investment in solar trash compactors that will be around the neighborhood and paid for by the promoter. What specific concerns did you hear tonight? Similar concerns that communication at the outset when an opportunity presents itself be more forthright and be seeking input from the beginning. This was a very fast process and opportunity which was moving quickly and city staff took initiative to seize the opportunity and rightly or wrongly it left a lot of us in the neighborhood and indeed on the city council playing a little bit of catch up. In the end we try to be boosters moreover than party poopers but concerned listeners both before the event and after the event to understand what the neighborhood impacts are and what they fear they could be should we do this again. Andrea Mihaver is president of the Munchoy Hill Neighborhood Association. She talked about the feedback she's received about the concert. It's from the gamut. There have been a couple. There are a few people who are quite upset about the concert but other than that it's been, you know, it was a great event, seemed to be really positive but here's what didn't work and there were, you know, some logistical things that didn't work. The food, the water running out, we heard that from a lot of people. The prom being basically cut off for four days as opposed to one that was some concern from people, you know, those kinds of things. There's also a fair amount of concern about public facility being used for a private event. Speak to that a little bit. Yeah, we did. We received actually probably, I would say the majority of our feedback was around that because, you know, people express that this is a public park. It's where we go to enjoy it every day and is it really right philosophically speaking to charge money for an event for that. But I think most of the people that express that concern said, you know, if it was done on a smaller scale, not smaller scale meaning smaller concert but less often, you know, they could handle a once a year type of thing but if it became a regular event that would be of concern to them. So that was, I think, most of the feedback that we got. Portland Mayor Michael Brennan talked about finding the right balance for the use of public facilities. Probably four or five times a week we use public space for for-profit ventures in the city of Portland. From Merrill Auditorium to the ice arena to the expo, you name it, Hadlock Field. So I don't know if this particular event is uniquely different from things that we do all the time in terms of using public facilities for for-profit ventures. The Easter problem is a precious asset to the city of Portland and we should do everything we can to protect and take hands with that asset. In this particular case I thought it was a good use of the asset and I thought the benefit to the city, you know, several people mentioned this but we ended up on a long stage and we did well. Councillor Donahue, going forward, what happened to all the information and data that you heard here tonight? Well Mayor Brennan and I at prodding from some of the members of the public are seeking an executive summary from staff about lessons learned from the execution of this event and dealing with how to resolve, address some of the issues that were brought up by members of the public tonight and by email prior to tonight so that it serves as a policy document, not a policy document, a management document to help future administrations because we don't know how long it will be, deal very well with this sort of opportunity in the future and so that the public has a reference point for the lessons learned just so that we're dealing with more than folk wisdom.