Despite Yucaipa voters passage of Measure S, the one-percent sales tax override that was on the ballot in November, Yucaipa city officials are moving to cancel the Five Winds Country Music Festival scheduled for October 2025.
In making his pitch to Yucaipa’s voters to give approval to Measure S, the architect of that initiative, then-City Manager Chris Mann, said it would, among other things, preserve the city’s commitment to cultural events, a reference to performances at the city-owned-and-operated Yucaipa Performing Arts Center and other events such as the Five Winds Country Music Festival, which has been held on an annual basis since COVID restrictions ended.
In not so many words, Mann suggested that events such as the Five Winds Country Music Festival, which has been held, variously, at the Five Winds Ranch, located on properties spanning from 37186 Oak Glen Road to 37254 Oak Glen Road or at El Dorado Ranch Park, would continue to be held.
Those events are on occasion modestly subsidized by the city.
In the case of the Yucaipa Performing Arts Center, the venue generally turned a profit or broke even. In some cases, operations with regard to certain performances ran at a deficit.
In the case of the Five Winds County Music Festival, billed as a celebration and spectacle of music, dance, art, and community spirit, acts such as Chris Janson, Rodney Atkins, Adam Doleac, Frank Ray, Russell Dickerson, George Birge, Dillon Carmichael and Drew Baldridge performed.
Mann’s personal advocacy of Measure S and the sophisticated and in-depth public relations campaign he managed to promote the initiative was considered crucial to its passage by the city’s voters in November. Measure S passed, with 15,260 or 50.04 percent of the city’s 25,415 participating voters in support and 10,155 or 39.96 percent opposed. More than four years previously, in March 2020, Yucaipa’s voters had soundly defeated Measure E, which sought to impose a one-half cent per dollar or half of a percent sales tax on goods sold within the city, with 5,212 or 35.96 percent of the city’s 14,493 participating voters in favor of it and 9,281 or 64.04 percent opposed.
Measure E had been promoted by the city’s then-city manager, Ray Casey, who was pushed out by a city council majority composed of Justin Beaver, Bobby Duncan and Matt Garner in January 2023. Beaver, Duncan and Garner had replaced Casey with Mann. Controversy had ensured. Following the 2024 election cycle, Duncan and Garner are no longer in office.
Despite the city’s financial challenges having been redressed somewhat by the passage of Measure S, the current city council ruling majority, consisting of members Jon Thorp, Chris Venable and Bob Miller, last month moved to relieve Mann of his control over the city. In doing so, they provided him with a one-time $279,045 payout as well as the provision of one year of health benefits for him and his family as a severance settlement to induce him to leave without contesting what was in essence his termination.
With some minor financial support from the city, the Five Winds County Music Festival was scheduled to take place at the Five Winds Ranch in October.
Word now comes that the city is withdrawing its support, meaning the event has been canceled.
Yesterday, April 3, the city posted that it needed to withdraw its sponsorship of the Five Winds Festival to avoid digging any deeper into the municipality’s nearly empty pockets.
On Instagram, the city announced, “We know fans will be disappointed, and this wasn’t an easy decision, but we’re committed to balancing the budget and protecting public safety.”
The announcement comes more than two years after the city agreed to pay out the $442,892.08 remainder of Casey’s contract through June 2024 – amounting to 17¾ months of pay at $299,420 per year – for him to depart peacefully following his replacement by Mann.
By doing away with the annual country music festival, the city says, Yucaipa will save some $60,000 and improve its fiscal health.
Some Yucaipans observed that if the city councils, as they were composed in 2023 and this year, had avoided having to pay Mann and Casey $721,937 for them not to work, Yucaipa will improve its fiscal health.