Labor Day weekend motorcycle rally vendors have been mostly absent from downtown Ignacio for a couple of years. Town officials apparently want them back.
Town Clerk Georgann Valdez told trustees on March 18, "We are getting calls already regarding vendor fees and the (town hall) parking lot." Town Manager Lee San Miguel agreed.
"We never get a vendor in here before Aug. 1," Valdez said. "I just want to be able to tell them what the fee will be." She cited a town vendor fee of $250 for the weekend plus $100 per day for space in the parking lot.
It's an opportunity for the town to make money, trustee Cecilia Robbins said, but she noted issues that will need to be addressed, such as electricity and trash. She said she has experience dealing with the vendors and offered to meet with town staff about that.
The Ignacio Chamber of Commerce took over the Ignacio rally from a private organizer on short notice in 2006 to keep it going with volunteers. In 2012, the chamber created a corporation to operate the rally, which has struggled financially since losses that year.
Recently they completed the sale of the rally to Johnny Valdez, who had a major hand in organizing and running the rally for the past three years.
Because of a contract dispute and lawsuits between the Southern Ute Indian Tribe and the private organizer who pulled out in 2006, the rally was unable to use its longtime base at Sky Ute Event Center until 2012. So activities and the vendors were in downtown Ignacio and on Richard Olguin's land across from the post office.
In 2012, there were events and vendors both in town and at the event center. But because there was an admission charge at the event center while downtown was free, bikers and spectators favored the downtown, resulting in losses for the chamber and unhappy vendors at the event center.
In 2013 at the behest of the rally, the town set its vendor fee at $800 and imposed various conditions to discourage vendors setting up in town. Landowners in town were advised that the rally was only providing liability insurance at the event center, so there could be liability issues for anyone who let an uninsured vendor use their land.
Valdez told the Times there was one in-town vendor that year. For 2014, the town fee went back to $250. Two vendor permits were sold.
"We shot ourselves in the foot trying to help them out, and they haven't helped us. The year the town made the vendor fee very high," trustee Tom Atencio said last week.
Robbins speculated that there will be another request to set the in-town fee at $800.
Valdez told the Times that town representatives met Monday and agreed on the $250 vendor fee. That committee included trustees Atencio and Robbins.
