City Council questions cutbacks to festival

The Baltimore City Council is questioning changes the Pugh administration made to the city’s annual African American Festival.

For years, the AFRAM Festival was known for attracting crowds as large as 200,000 for a two-day event near downtown Baltimore’s sports stadiums. But last year, Mayor Catherine Pugh scaled the event down to one day at Druid Hill Park after finding problems with what she called its fiscal management.

The festival drew fewer than 4,000 attendees in 2017.

On Monday, the city released information that showed the budget for the event was cut from about $892,000 in 2015 to $339,000 last year as the city canceled a $535,000 deal with a private vendor. This year’s budget for the festival is $400,000. The amount of city services spent on the event remains about the same.

Pugh said Tuesday that AFRAM will continue to be a great event, but will be run in a more fiscally responsible way.

“When we came into office, we found out the bills weren’t paid,” the mayor said of festival expenses. “We’re not trying to throw anybody under the bus, but the bills weren’t paid.”

Once again, the event will be held in Druid Hill Park this year, but it will span two days, on Aug. 11-12, city officials said.

The free festival this year will include British R&B singer Ella Mai, who is best known for the song “Boo’d Up,” and Cash Money Records singer/rapper Jacquees. They will perform Aug. 11, while Baltimore group Dru Hill and gospel singer VaShawn Mitchell are scheduled to perform Aug. 12.

Pugh said she thinks the event’s location helps celebrate one of the city’s great parks.

“We’ve got great parks, and I think we’ll have a great festival,” she said.

Pugh added that the city spends more on AFRAM than any other “cultural festival.”

City Councilman Brandon Scott held a hearing Monday questioning why the event was scaled back.

“A festival that had 100,000 people per day, we're now expecting 20,000 a day,” Scott asked. “Why does this festival have to be smaller? … It’s the black people that are getting the short end of the stick.”

Scott continued to question the Pugh administration Tuesday on Twitter.

“AFRAM was a event that Black Baltimore took pride in and it deserves to remain a top tier event in funding and size for many reasons,” he wrote.