Committee presses Bird Promotions on event finances, ownership of festival assets

South Padre Island Convention & Visitors Bureau (CVB) committee members pressed Bird Promotions representatives on invoicing, marketing expenditures and the legal/operational ownership of several island festivals during a committee meeting. Raul Garcia and Ricky Garcia of Bird Promotions attended to answer questions about four events — Crawfish Festival, Chrome in the Sand, Tacos and Tequila, and Craft Beer — that the committee had previously funded.

Committee members said they had been led to believe the festivals were city-owned or “in-house” events when the committee approved seed funding, and asked why websites, marketing accounts and related invoices were under the promoter’s control. “It was sold to us as a city event,” a committee member said, adding that committee members and some city leaders had been surprised to learn the CVB does not own the websites or other assets. Raul Garcia responded that the events are his productions working closely with the city and that Bird Promotions has worked with the CVB for about three years.

The committee requested financial transparency. Members asked for profit-and-loss statements, itemized operating expenses and proof of advertising spend (for example, direct invoices from Facebook, Instagram and other ad platforms rather than invoices from third-party vendors). Raul Garcia said he would provide P&Ls and additional documentation and apologized that Bird Promotions had not arrived prepared with those documents.

Members scrutinized specific vendor charges in the packet of documents provided earlier to the committee. Questions were raised about repeated, identical invoices across events, large line items for web hosting (AWS products such as CloudFront and S3), an approximately $4,500 life-size beer mug listed under marketing, and duplicated “strategic session” charges from a vendor identified as Multilevel Services. Bird Promotions said many marketing services were performed in kind or through long-standing vendor relationships and offered to review and clarify individual invoices.

Committee members also questioned how vendor and sponsorship revenue were treated under the MOU between the promoter and the CVB. Bird Promotions said many early-stage festivals did not charge vendor fees (or charged modest amounts, typically $100–$200) to encourage participation and that most revenues went to operational expenses. The promoter estimated, on-the-spot, that total operating expenses for the Crawfish Festival could reach roughly $50,000–$60,000 but said he would provide a detailed breakdown. The committee repeatedly emphasized the committee’s mandate to fund events that generate “heads and beds” (hotel room nights) and said that one-day events that do not incentivize overnight stays do not align as strongly with the committee’s hoteliers-tax funding goals.

Committee members said some events had been paid out without complete post-event reports and asked why the promoter — rather than the CVB finance office — was sometimes paying security vendors. CVB staff explained that the finance director had recommended payment routing through the promoter so that the promoter, who holds the event insurance, would contract and pay security directly.

Bird Promotions representatives acknowledged the committee’s concerns, apologized for gaps in documentation and said they are committed to working with CVB staff to provide the requested receipts, P&Ls and more detailed vendor explanations. They also said they plan to continue producing events on the island and to present future funding requests with fuller documentation as required by the committee.

Committee members urged the CVB and promoters to clarify at the outset whether an event is CVB-owned (in-house) or promoter-owned so the committee can apply the correct procedures and oversight. Several members described the prior presentation of the festivals as “in-house” as a key driver of the current confusion about expectations, reporting and allowable expenditures. The committee did not take formal action on Bird Promotions during this meeting; members instructed staff and the promoter to return with the requested documentation and to clarify the events’ ownership and accounting going forward.