On September 7, the Town of Pelham posted to its website a letter to Town Council purportedly written by the Pelham Summerfest Committee. The letter takes issue with the Voice’s reporting on the efforts of a Pelham Street business owner to lobby for changes in how and where Summerfest is held.
Unfortunately, the Committee’s letter is riddled with false allegations, starting with “In the past couple of weeks there have been several articles” relating to Summerfest.
From August 17 until today, the Voice has run one (1) article about Summerfest.
For a rebuttal that’s aimed at correcting errors, this is a lamentably major one, and calls into question the accuracy of each assertion that follows.
More disturbingly, the letter demonstrates that the Committee evidently fails to understand how the role of a journalist differs from that of a public relations spokesperson.
The Voice of Pelham is not the Town of Pelham’s public relations arm. A reporter’s duty is to report accurately—whether or not what’s reported is palatable to government officials. This is what’s known in western democracies as a free press. A free press is also allowed to express opinions at odds with the policies and desires of government officials. Again, this is a hallmark of freedom of speech accorded to every citizen in a free society.
The Voice accurately reported the statements made to us by a business owner on Pelham Street. If the Summerfest Committee questions the accuracy of this individual’s statements, this is an entirely separate issue from whether the newspaper accurately transcribed the statements.
We note that the Summerfest Committee is comprised of some fine Pelham residents, people whose dedication to charitable causes and the public welfare over years and decades is unassailable. It would be regrettable if, under their name, a third party wrote, or substantially coached the writing of, the Committee’s letter, in support of an agenda wholly separate from the Committee’s work, and thereby bringing the Committee’s credibility into disrepute.
The author’s fundamental mischaracterization of the Voice’s role is either deliberate or incompetent. Either option is shameful, and brings shame upon senior Town staff for posting such falsehoods on the Town’s website.
At no time since the article’s publication on August 17 has the Summerfest Committee requested a retraction from the Voice for any alleged factual errors in our reporting.
We accordingly invite the Summerfest Committee to provide the Voice with any such list of factual errors, in writing, addressed to our Editor, Publisher, or both.
Failing this, we request an immediate retraction of the Committee’s assertion that the Voice engaged in “inaccurate” reporting, and the immediate removal of the Committee’s letter from the Town’s website. If neither is forthcoming, the Voice reserves its right to pursue a cause of action for libel and/or other remedies as counsel may advise.
Cordially,
THE VOICE
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What follows is the entire text of the Voice's August 17 article on Pelham Street objections to Summerfest, starting on page 1:
PELHAM STREET TO SUMMERFEST: MOVE IT
Over the years, Pelham’s Summerfest has grown into one of the largest festivals in the Region. The four-day event has come to draw tens of thousands of revellers into Fonthill, and has been touted as a massive success for the Town.
But not everyone in Pelham is thrilled with what the event has become, and one local business owner is now petitioning to have Summerfest moved to a different location in the future.
Paul Hammond operates Wheel Class Automotive and Hot Rod Parts on Pelham Street. He asserts that the festival has diverged from its original mandate to celebrate local businesses.
“It started out originally to help businesses get back on their feet, and now it’s just a big money- maker for the Town,” he said.
The festival was first conceived in 2011 as a single-day event to showcase the completion of new downtown streetscaping, and to get people out to the businesses that had been hurt by extended construction delays. But today, says Hammond, the focus has shifted toward out-of-town vendors who compete with local businesses, rather than complement them.
“The vendors that come here are not from Pelham,” said Hammond. “The whole idea was to help Fonthill businesses, and now they’ve got people coming from all over.”
Not only do these vendors compete directly with local business, but Hammond believes that many of them have a distinct advantage.
“Half of them aren’t even legal businesses. The first weekend they were setting up, I said to one organizer ‘I’d like to see all the business licenses of these people here,’ and she just kind of cursed at me and said I was just being miserable.”
“I’m sure they don’t claim the sales on their taxes like I have to if I go to tradeshow or wherever,” he added.
Hammond’s petition received support from about 20 other businesses on Pelham Street. In general, he says, the petitioners feel that the length of the event, combined with the restricted access to their buildings and competing outside vendors, does more harm than good for many firms on the downtown strip.
“It definitely doesn’t help us, which was the whole reason they started this thing back then,” he said.
Hammond also claims that the number of signatures would have been even higher, but several businesses refused to sign, fearing reprisals from the Town, including from a landlord who is also a Town Councillor.
“All of us think the same way, but nobody wants to come forward and say anything,” he said.
“That shouldn’t happen. People shouldn’t be afraid of that.”
Hammond stresses that the petitioners do not want to see the event shut down, they only want it moved to a less intrusive spot, such as Harold Black Park.
“These people aren’t saying they don’t want it, they’re just saying they don’t want it here.”
In an emailed statement to the Voice, Mayor David Augustyn defended Summerfest as a positive community-building event: “Pelham Summerfest is about celebrating community and helping local businesses and service clubs. For instance, local Service Clubs share in the profits of wine and beer sales. Further, Summerfest sponsored a seminar for local businesses on how to best take advantage of the more than 30,000 Festival participants.”
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