City of McAllen loses more than $765,000 on holiday events

MCALLEN, Texas (AP) - The city of McAllen has lost more than $765,000 on three holiday events in 2015.

The Monitor (https://bit.ly/21ZQ9JB ) reports that the city budgeted $1.1 million for the Christmas parade, Christmas in the park and the stadium promotion, but generated just more than $239,000 in revenue.

The biggest loss came from the stadium promotion, which featured a performance by singer Enrique Iglesias. The city budgeted for $1.1 million but only generated $239,180 in revenue. City officials haven’t released the amount Iglesias was paid, saying the contract was confidential.

Mayor Jim Darling says securing Iglesias was probably a rushed process and that further foresight would help the city plan a budget appropriately.

Darling and City Manager Roy Rodriguez say they’ll look to hire a promoter for future concerts in order to combat potential losses.

“You don’t want to spend taxpayer’s money lightly,” Darling said after the meeting. “So we’re pretty well decided that we’ll go forward with this promoter to take the risk and we’ll wait to see what kind of promoter agreement comes back to make a decision to go forward.

The other two events were close to their budgets.

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Information from: The Monitor, https://www.themonitor.com