San Fer­nan­do may­or Ju­nia Re­grel­lo says that if the Na­tion­al Car­ni­val Com­mis­sion (NCC) con­tin­ues to starve the San Fer­nan­do City Cor­po­ra­tion of suf­fi­cient funds, it will soon lead to the death of Car­ni­val in the city.

Dur­ing his month­ly ad­dress at Wednes­day’s statu­to­ry meet­ing at City Hall, Re­grel­lo said that the re­duc­tion in al­lo­ca­tions over the years have stymied the Car­ni­val ac­tiv­i­ties in San Fer­nan­do.

He said that along with hand­i­cap­ping the growth, it has im­pact­ed on the Cor­po­ra­tion’s abil­i­ty to pay prize mon­ey owed to ded­i­cat­ed mas bands, steel­bands and ca­lyp­so­ni­ans.

“These dri­vers of our Car­ni­val cul­ture, who in the face of these loss­es, con­tin­ue on in the name of keep­ing our her­itage alive. The pauci­ty of fund­ing on­ly serves to de­mo­ti­vate them in their tire­less ef­forts and de­mands im­me­di­ate at­ten­tion if we in­tend to keep the cel­e­bra­tions alive in our City. For many years, San Fer­nan­do was a nexus point for the towns and vil­lages in the South. How­ev­er, the dis­tri­b­u­tion of fund­ing for Car­ni­val has not grown pro­por­tion­ate­ly with our evo­lu­tion as a city and re­quires im­me­di­ate at­ten­tion.

“If this course of ac­tion by the NCC con­tin­ues along this path I am cer­tain the dis­rup­tion to Car­ni­val in San Fer­nan­do will progress to a point where there may not be Car­ni­val cel­e­bra­tions from a com­pe­ti­tion per­spec­tive and will ul­ti­mate­ly be the death of Car­ni­val in San Fer­nan­do,” Re­grel­lo said.

He added that South­ern-based steel­bands are mov­ing around “cap-in-hand” seek­ing fi­nan­cial as­sis­tance. He said two of the city’s large bands are op­er­at­ing with an al­lo­ca­tion of less than $500,000 which is in­clu­sive of trans­porta­tion.

“Heav­en help us.”

Based on fig­ures from the Cor­po­ra­tion, NCC fund­ing for Car­ni­val has been dwin­dling since 2013 when they re­ceived $3 mil­lion to 2018’s al­lo­ca­tion of $400,000.

Last week, Re­grel­lo said that NCC had al­lo­cat­ed $400,000 for 2019 and he had asked NCC chair­man Win­ston “Gyp­sy” Pe­ters to re­view the fund­ing. Up to yes­ter­day, no funds were placed in the city’s cof­fers for Car­ni­val.

The is­sue with fund­ing goes deep­er as Re­grel­lo and Pe­ters have been at odds over the con­struc­tion of a gate at Skin­ner Park. Pe­ters had re­cent­ly claimed that the cor­po­ra­tion wast­ed its 2018 al­lo­ca­tion on putting up the gate, which he said had been built years ago when he was the Min­is­ter of Arts and Mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism.

Not on­ly did Re­grel­lo de­ny the claim, but he al­so said the ven­ti­la­tion of the mat­ter in the pub­lic do­main has cost the city the loss of one po­ten­tial spon­sor­ship and can tar­nish fu­ture spon­sors.

Re­grel­lo said that sub­stan­tial ev­i­dence in­di­cates that the con­struc­tion and in­stal­la­tion of this gate were car­ried out in Feb­ru­ary 2013 un­der a dif­fer­ent po­lit­i­cal ad­min­is­tra­tion.

In 2013, the al­lo­ca­tion was $3 mil­lion and the then coun­cil, award­ed a con­tract to one of the coun­cil­lors who sub-con­tract­ed it to New Earth Con­trac­tors Lim­it­ed. Pay­ment was made in three tranch­es to­talling $275,000.