So what does the community think about Fred Fest?

By JOHN MACKOWIAK

The title of a hit single from deceased Hip-Hop artist Notorious B.I.G. sums up what Fred Fest means to the village.

“Mo Money, Mo Problems.”

SUNY Fredonia's end of the year bash tends to bring in droves of alumni and outsiders. And those non-students need a place to stay, a place to eat and a place to drink.

What it all means is that Fred Fest brings in new money for Fredonia's hotels, restaurants and bars.

“It's an economic stimulus for the bars downtown and for surrounding bars and restaurants, so it does bring in additional people and money into the community,” said former Fredonia Mayor Frank Pagano.

Forget Congress's economic stimulus plan. The nation should just have a huge music (and drinking) festival.

Pagano, who now spends part of the year in Florida, used to be a businessman prior to being mayor. He was the owner of a couple restaurants and a bar. He knows first-hand about the financial boost that Fred Fest provides for local businesses.

“The bars and the restaurants pick up extra revenue from the stimulus that's created from all those coming into the community,” Pagano said.

It's undeniable. There are more people in Fredonia for Fred Fest, than there are on an average weekend. And that means more money for the village's small businesses.


Vice President of Student Affairs David Herman thinks the festival is an event that many local entrepreneurs excitedly anticipate.

“It's very good, economically, for the village, and all the businesses do great business that weekend, especially the bars and restaurants,” Herman said. “So, I think that they do look forward to it economically.”

But there is a downside to all of the money filtering into the village. As Biggie told the world in his hit single, with the money comes the problems.

“The village has sort of a love-hate relationship with Fred Fest,” Herman said. “In some ways, they're happy that the students are having a good time and that spring has arrived and that it brings a lot of business to the village, but in other ways, it's quite disruptive, especially when they have to put on extra police. It costs them money in the village budget, and residents are inconvenienced by the noise.”


Busting Skulls

Village Police will be forced to deal with higher volumes of drunk and rowdy people downtown. Arrests will have to be made, and fines will have to be paid.

“There's always the usual problems, and they're all created from too much alcohol,” Pagano said.

The former mayor listed some of the things that he saw during his tenure.

“When you drink to much there's the problem of assault and fights, and the police have to deal with that,” Pagano continued. “And we've had occasions where we found students sleeping on people's porches because they didn't know where they were. It's all related to alcohol, of course. And that's why they come because they want to drink, but you have to drink responsibly.”

When Herman was interviewing for his job as vice president, he had to sit down with the village's mayor and police chief. He said that for 80 percent of that interview, they talked about the Fred Fest that had taken place the previous weekend.

That was 2001—the year after which the decision was made to make Fred Fest into a one-day event, rather than a three-day raucous bash.

There were at least 22 arrests that weekend, as the village was flooded by non-students.

“It caused quite a disruption to the village,” Herman said.

Things have become much more tame since then, but the police force will still be prepared for the unexpected.

According to Fredonia Mayor Mike Sullivan, the village police will have a visible presence downtown. Sullivan said that the officers are most concerned with making sure everyone is safe, not filling up the holding center and handing out tickets.

“The Fredonia police are going to have their presence down there every weekend,” Sullivan said. “There used to be a lot more concern by the police of handing out citations for open container, and they've really taken more of the approach that the idea has to be public safety and preserving the peace.”

It's police discretion. A police officer will ticket an individual if they are being obvious and obnoxious with an open container. The village force wants to ensure that everyone acts responsibly and nobody is hurt.

“The primary focus is to make sure that everyone down there is safe,” Sullivan said. “It's much more maintaining the public peace than trying to fine somebody. ”

Since 2001, Fred Fest has been gradually declining in prominence and exposure. Fewer and fewer people are coming, making the festival less of a challenge for police.

Pagano couldn't really say if that was a good thing or a bad thing. He said he could go either way with it.

“I think it's good in a sense because the police can handle it better, and it's bad because there's not as much revenue generated into the community,” Pagano said.

What a Mess!

The other concern that is the mess that is left behind by the hard-partying Fred Festers.

When Fredonia wakes up the next morning, Barker Commons, Main Street, Water Street and all of the other roads will have trash scattered throughout.

With the morning's sun just rising above the horizon, early bird residents will be out walking their dogs. At the same time, some students will finally be shutting their eyes after a night of heavy drinking and wacky adventures.

The dog walker will tug on his dog's leash, as animal stops to examine a half-eaten hamburger that's been cast aside by a full-stomached drunkard.

The fresh green grass surrounding the Commons' fountains will be strewn with red Solo cups, beer cans and sandwich wrappers. There will be shards of glass from broken bottles in the alleys and parking lots behind the bars. Cigarette butts will lie dormant on the sidewalks.

“There's a mess to clean up in the morning. The street department has to send out people to clean up the streets and the garbage that's accumulated,” Pagano said.

Sullivan agreed that there is a mess downtown after Fred Fest weekend, and some residents will complain about it.

But there's always a mess, he said.

“There will be people that approach—and I know last year was my first year as mayor, I know I was approached the morning after, Sunday morning, by a couple of people who said, 'Boy, I looked at downtown. It looks terrible,'” Sullivan said. “Well, I'd been downtown, and it really wasn't that unusual. There were a few more cups here and there, but I also noticed that the bar owners already had people out, at the point I was down there, cleaning up.”

This year, there will be even less of a reason for residents to complain about the mess. One of the student groups on-campus, Students for Peace, is sponsoring a village-wide clean up effort.

They're calling it the Fredonia Town Clean-Up. It'll be the morning after. All students have been invited to join Students for Peace at Barker Commons at noon on May 4 to lend a hand.


The Bigger Picture

According to Herman, half of the residents in the village have a connection to the university. They're either faculty, staff or related to faculty or staff, or they might be local business people who rely on the money from the student population.

The campus is an asset to the region. It's vital to the local economy, and it's a center for culture in Chautauqua County.

There might be a few individuals who complain about students' weekend activities, including Fred Fest, but most residents don't have a problem with it. They can deal with the noise and the minor costs and the mess because they are aware that without the university, the local economy might fall apart.

“The college is part of the community. It's a celebration to end the semester at the university, and certainly, I think enough money comes into the community to offset the costs and the problems that are created.” Pagano said. “I certainly as an individual have no problems with it, and I live right across from the college.”

Pagano said that 99 percent of the students behave. It's that one percent that causes all of the problems.

The same is true about the complaining villagers, Sullivan insists. There is a tiny portion of residents who do all of the complaining, but those few complainers are louder than people who aren't bothered by Fred Fest.

“I take the approach that if that's the worst of our problems, then we we're doing pretty well. I think when you see the efforts that the students take at other times of the year, like the raking they do,” Sullivan said. “I think most people have realized that if we didn't have the college here, there wouldn't be much reason for people to be here.”

As exhibited by the college's Leaf-Raking Event and the Fredonia Town Clean-Up, many students are actively engaged in the community. Most villagers recognize that, and, as a result, they understand that college students will be college students.

“We've seen that time and time again, when there's been a problem in town, the residents always come out and speak up on behalf of students and say, 'hey most students are really good. We have a great relationship,'” Herman said. “So I do think they're very supportive and they tolerate a lot as a community because they remember when they were young, when they were students, and I think that they feel that, overall, Fredonia's a great place to be.”

Most of Chautauqua County's cities, towns and villages are losing population, while the number of Fredonia's residents has remained stable. And the student population is growing.

Each year, SUNY Fredonia receives more applications and admits more students than the previous year. That's been the trend over the past several years.

And as the number of students increases, the college creates more jobs.

More jobs and more people mean a more solvent economy for northern Chautauqua County.

Mayor Sullivan said that the university's contribution to the local economy is so huge that residents really can't complain. If the college left town, according to Sullivan, residents would lose jobs, services and entertainment options.

“I think a lot of people here in the village look at the fact that the economic value to our community for having it (the university) here, you live with it for that one day when they have the bands outside,” Sullivan said.