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Whitman-Walker is off the hook for $18,000 — some of which was already paid and will be refunded — for security at this year’s Capital Pride. (Blade file photo by Henry Linser)
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HOME > NEWS > LOCAL
By: LOU CHIBBARO J COMMENTS
 
A city government agency last week agreed to refund $14,745 that it required organizers of Washington’s annual gay Pride festival and parade to pay for police overtime and other security costs associated with the June events.
Darrell Darnell, acting director of the city’s Homeland Security and Emergency Management Agency, informed the Whitman-Walker Clinic of its decision to waive an $18,000 security fee after D.C. Councilmember Phil Mendelson (D-At-Large) raised questions about the fee.
Whitman-Walker serves as chief sponsor and organizer of the annual Capital Pride parade and festival.
Chip Lewis, a spokesperson for Whitman-Walker, said the emergency management agency earlier this year agreed to waive $18,000 of a $36,000 fee that police planned to bill Capital Pride for police overtime and other security assistance for both the parade and festival. The festival took place on Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W., near the U.S. Capitol.
Emergency management officials told Capital Pride organizers the event might be eligible for a waiver of the remaining $18,000 fee but the agency was running low on funds and “we probably wouldn’t get it,” Lewis said.
So the clinic, through its Capital Pride committee, never applied for the full waiver, according to Lewis. In the months since the festival was held, Whitman-Walker and other local activists learned that the Homeland Security and Emergency Management Agency approved a full waiver for at least one other community festival and parade near the Eastern Market on Capitol Hill.
Mendelson said he directed his staff to research the issue and he later sent letters to emergency management officials asking why they didn’t offer Capital Pride a full waiver. Lewis said that at Mendelson’s suggestion, Capital Pride submitted a waiver request last week and that Darnell informed Capital Pride director Dave Mallory on August 24 that the full waiver had been approved.
The agency said it would refund the $14,745 that Whitman-Walker had to pay prior to the start of the Capital Pride events and would cancel an invoice of just over $3,000 that it planned to send the clinic for the balance of the $18,000 fee, Lewis said.
He said the clinic would divide the refund among the clinic itself and 13 smaller groups that helped sponsor Capital Pride this year based on the percentage of funds that the sponsoring groups contributed toward the Pride events. Lewis said the sponsoring groups contributed a total of $29,000 compared to Whitman Walker’s contribution of $100,000.
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