Come and Take It asking for $80,000 in HOT funds to expand festival

Members of the Come and Take It Celebration committee met with Gonzales City Council on Feb. 13 to discuss the city giving the yearly festival an additional $40,000 in Hotel Occupancy Tax (HOT) funds for the 2025 event.

Festival organizers said they want to make this year’s festival, which coincides with the bicentennial of the founding of Gonzales, to be extra special and expanded to include an extra day of events on Thursday, Oct. 2, but that the request would mean the need for additional funding.

The city not only has given HOT funds to the festival in the past to help fund it, but also has made in-kind contributions from the police, utility, streets, parks and recreation, fire marshal and code enforcement departments. That amount is expected to total $21,561.50 in 2025.

District 3 Councilmember Lorenzo Hernandez asked organizers about the two budgets they submitted for the event — one based on receiving the same $40,000 from the city as the festival got in 2024 and the other based on receiving $80,000.

Hernandez noted the budget with the $40,000 funding showed a projected income of $311,400 against expenses of $308,950 for an ending balance of $2,450, while the budget showing $80,000 funding had income of $366,300 against expenses of $364,750 for a lower ending balance of $1,550.

While ticket and alcohol sales would be expected to rise by about $14,900, entertainment expenses would grow by $55,800.

“You’re telling me that’s all you make?” Hernandez asked.

Gonzales Chamber of Commerce board secretary Allison Davis, who also is on the Come and Take It Celebration Committee, answered that the festival is meant to be offered “as a free event to the community.”

“The logistics of downtown make it near impossible for us to possibly fence in the event to take in a gate income, which many festivals around us are able to do,” Davis said. “But with the fire station being downtown and the way our squares are set up, that presents a challenging situation for us, which is why we don't do that.”

Hernandez questioned why there appeared to be $6,700 expenses for security on the CTI budget as well as a $3,706.17 line item in the in-kind contribution from the city. City Manager Tim Crow explained the in-kind line item is for the Saturday parade and is separate from the actual event security contained in the CTI budget.

Hernandez also asked why, if the city gave an additional $40,000 in HOT funds, the festival would show an ending balance of $900 less, adding “That’s not making much sense to me.”

“I think what you're seeing there is why we're going to make less is our entertainment expense will go up with the activities and the entertainment we bring in (for an extra day),” Davis said. “I think that line item is larger on the back of the page versus on the front of the page, and adding an extra night will eat up a lot of those expenses.

“It is a lot of money, and it's an investment in our community, in a celebration,” Davis added.

Asked by Hernandez about the ticket booth expenses of $9,000, Davis replied that ticket booth volunteers are not paid, but are given a T-shirt to wear and food and drink while they are working.

“We buy the tickets for the ticket booth. We buy the tokens for the ticket booth and the containers that those are stored and any repairs that we do each year to that,” Davis said. “If we have a window out, we'll put in a new window — any repairs to the actual ticket booth itself are taken care of in that extensive line item. Tickets are expensive. Tokens are expensive. I know we bought quite a few of those.

“The credit card machines we rent for the weekend, the ATM machines that we bring in, which are used, so I feel like they're a necessity. This was our first year to accept credit cards at the ticket booth, and we saw an increased opportunity with those and so we were thankful that we had that.”

Discussing entertainment, Come and Take It Celebration chair Daisy Scheske Freeman said the cost of the stage alone can run $6,000 while the sound can be “anywhere between $5,000 and $6,000.”

“Your artist can range anywhere between $15,000 and $30,000 and that's for the artists that we have had in the past. Now if you want Travis Tritt or Dwight Yoakum, that's over $100,000.”

Mayor Steve Sucher asked Finance Director Laura Zella about the list of submitted HOT funds requests to the city, which also included a request for $150,000 by Cattle Country Festival, which received $40,000 in its inaugural year in 2024 after initially asking for $100,000.

Councilmembers asked for a more itemized breakdown of expenses from the committee and asked to table making a decision on the HOT funds request until a future meeting.