Showing posts with label Daffodil Festival. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Daffodil Festival. Show all posts

Tuesday, April 14, 2015

The Gloucester Magazine - Daffodil Festival Edition





The Gloucester Magazine vol 1 issue 1 from Chuck Thompson

We are introducing our newest creation by TTC Media.  The Gloucester Magazine covering Gloucester County, Virginia.  (We have readers from all over the world so we need to specify exact location here).  This is Volume One Issue One.  We are not producing this in print format.  This is strictly an online digital magazine.  This first edition is mostly all pictures and covers the Daffodil Festival from this past weekend.  We wanted to make it larger but due to computer issues, we had to stop at 26 pages.

  So far the feedback on the magazine is that people want it to be like a more traditional magazine with articles along with pictures.  We can do that.  Everyone is free to download and share this magazine with anyone they want however the contents of the magazine are under copyright so no part of the magazine may be printed or changed in any way without our express permission in writing in advance.   In order to download a copy you must first become a member of Slideshare itself.  Becoming a member is easy and free.  You can sign up using your Facebook or LinkedIn account or create a free account the normal way through Slideshare.  We hope everyone enjoys the latest creation.  We have a lot more in the works.

Thursday, October 17, 2013

Daffodil Festival 2014 Artwork Now Available For Public View

On display at the local library up at the Gloucester Courthouse location is the latest art prints submitted for the 2014 Daffodil Festival.  Our personal favorite is right here on top.  But that is just us.  The submissions are incredible and we are not looking to take anything away from any of the other artists by any means.  We highly recommend that if you have the time, make sure you make a trip to the library and view these works of art.

Though we like this print, the Coleman bridge in the background is facing the wrong way causing an issue for the viewer who is aware of it.  Now it is only a representation and a good one, but we can not get over that one issue.  This standing chimney is Powhatan's chimney for those who do not know this already.


 This print is incredible and one of our favorites.  The only issue we have is that the hot air balloons are distracting.  In the picture it looks nice, but close up, we thought it was a little much.  It's a wonderful folk art piece that shows tremendous talent.





This print is a staff favorite.  Only issue seen with this print is that it does not emphasis Daffodils enough.  This is one you need to see in person to appreciate the detail that went into the painting.







Another great piece where the artist showed wonderful talent.  The only issue seen with this one is that it does not emphasis Gloucester.  If it's only about Daffodil's then this one is at the top of this short list.  Part of the objective in our own view is the dual emphasis on both Daffodil's and Gloucester County.











This is a wonderful piece.  It emphasizes both Gloucester County as well as Daffodil's and Gloucester's historical courthouse circle area.  It was well thought out and executed.


Now these are not the only pictures at the library.  These are only a sampling of what is there.  To see the entire collection, please visit the library to view all the artwork.  You will find it well worth your time if you are one who appreciates art.






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Friday, May 10, 2013

Crossroads To Opportunity Or Failure - What Legacy Will We Leave?

We recently sent a letter to the Board of Supervisors that is meant to be read by Ted Wilmot and the Board.  The letter is below.  We can complain about the new ordinance 10-26 all we want but what good is it if we do not try and see if we can assist the county on getting it right and getting something passed that we can all be proud of.  This is a crossroads area where something incredible can happen for everyone in the county or become a major disaster.


This message is meant mostly for Ted Wilmot, however, each of you will be able to benefit from the information contained. This is regarding Gloucester County Ordinance 10-26 just published along with all the state laws that pertain to 58.1-3717. From what I am able to see you are actually shooting yourselves in the foot on numerous levels that are either going to restrict your ability to collect taxes or flood the roadways with gypsies. Both are very possible the way you are presently presenting the new ordinance.

Let me explain as the key is in section C of 58.1-3717. Let's look at this then I will break it down for each of you.

  1. Any tax imposed pursuant to § 58.1-3703 on peddlers and itinerant merchants shall not exceed $500 per year. Dealers in precious metals shall be taxed at rates provided in § .
What this means is that in lieu of someone paying taxes on income made, this acts like a pre paid tax. If you take an event like the Daffodil festival and throw all 160 plus vendors under a blanket umbrella $500.00 tax and then exempt yourself from having to pay those taxes, you eliminate your right to collect taxes from all of those vendors. You can not send out follow up forms to collect any taxes, you gave up that right under the umbrella and then didn't even pay yourselves.
Had you collected the $500.00 from someone else, you would collect less than $3.50 per merchant total and again would forfeit the right to send out follow up tax forms. If you try and charge each vendor a $500.00 prepaid tax, you will not have one vendor show up to something like the Daffodil festival. Most of the merchants would be hard pressed to make that in profit for the weekend. You would kill any chance for anyone to earn money.
The taxes we are talking about are taxes on gross sales receipts for sales in this area. What first must be established for 2014 is a proper amount of taxes on gross sales receipts for Gloucester from retail sales in Gloucester County. We are NOT talking about sales taxes required by the state and any additional 4% local prepared food taxes. When you have an event like the Daffodil Festival, you stand to collect much more than $500.00 in gross sales receipt taxes and you are already sending out the form for collecting state sales taxes anyway. You are only adding in a few lines to determine how much each merchant at the event owes after the event for gross sales receipts. (Like 32 cents per $100.00 in gross sales).
That is what needs to first be established in a uniform way. What the percentage of gross sales receipt taxes each merchant would be required to pay. That percentage can change from different types of merchants. Food sales can have either a higher or lower percentage than consumer goods retail sales.
A blanket $500.00 tax would be beneficial if used on a smaller event where it is held for say a weekend and there were only 50 vendors with only say about 7,000 people expected to attend.
A Dillon Rule Violation occurs when you restrict the merchant to 5 days or less. You can limit the event, but not the merchant. If you charge a merchant an advanced fee, that fee is good for the entire year. Another Dillon Rule violation is using the term vendor. It's not used by the state and has a new meaning these days than it once had. Vendor now is part of the supply chain for wholesale purposes, and exempt from the accompanied state laws.
Here is where you have some issues. If you grant a $500.00 tax license fee to someone, you do not have the ability to restrict them. I can then go out on 17 where 3 parking spaces are available, such as by Burger King on 17 and sell ugly oil paintings of Elvis for 11 and a half months and there is nothing you can do about it. You sold me a license to do so. You also have restricted your ability to collect gross sales receipt taxes from my sales. (Thank you). This law allows people to conduct sales as a regular brick and mortar business without having the expense of a brick and mortar overhead. All I have to do is put up a tent each day. (This has both good and bad potentials).
Here is what I see as a solution to the issues presently being worked on. For the 2014 Daffodil Festival, instead of thinking you need to charge each merchant a maximum $500.00 prepaid tax, you can charge each merchant a prepaid fee such as $10.00 per retail merchant and $20.00 per food merchant. No blanket, no follow up on gross sales receipts, no issues and everyone is happy. Chances are very high that you will collect more revenue this way and no one will be upset by it. But you have to set up the tax base structure to do so first.
Limitations. Restricting the amount of days a prepaid tax on a merchant can be done if it is based on a rate that would justify the restriction. Example, I want to sell ugly oil paintings of Elvis for 2 weeks. I have no idea what my sales receipts may be as this is the first time I ever tried this business idea. A $30.00 license tax would not be unreasonable and would clearly define the time limits. That the state laws allow from what I have read. The merchant or in reality peddler, would still owe and be responsible for collecting and paying state taxes, but would not be responsible for gross receipts sales taxes.
Look again at the statement in C, it says. Maximum tax that an itinerant merchant can be charged is $500.00. It does not say we recommend you charge each itinerant merchant the maximum license tax of $500.00. The state is NOT looking to hurt businesses. It's not in anyone's best interest to make doing business in the state near impossible. You do that you have no tax base left and county employees all become unpaid volunteers. Will you show up for work tomorrow if you know that you are now not getting paid?
Again, you shoot yourselves in the foot by exempting non profit organizations that bring in for profit merchants into a sales event. It's not the non profit that is hurt by the taxes. The non profit remains a non profit no matter what and nothing has to be added into 10-26 over it. You are leaving much needed tax revenue on the table by creating a blanket that removes your ability to collect gross revenue sales receipt taxes from the merchants.
If you want to help the non profits, then you determine a correct blanket that they can prepay and then they can add in those fees into the setup space charged each merchant. Then the merchant isn't responsible for taxes on gross sales receipts. Otherwise, go for the gross sales receipts taxes owed.
These laws were designed to make life easier for both local governments as well as businesses. Not restrict them and make everything harder and more expensive. It has the ability to increase the tax revenue base. More events mean more money for the county. Understand?
Here is where I think everyone gets confused. This was a dual purpose law that addressed a number of issues in the past. Going to the old door to door rug sucker salesperson, counties were not able to collect proper gross receipt sales taxes on retailers that entered into various counties. People were also fed up with door to door salespeople. This law initially allowed localities to create an assessment value on door to door companies which created an accounting nightmare for all of them. They were all forced to discontinue door to door sales because they then had to break up total sales and account for sales in each county and pay each county it's share of gross sales receipts earned in that locality. It became cost prohibitive.
You can't get rid of these laws or the door to door salespeople come back. You can structure new uses for the laws to help localities however. Event planning is perfect here. You have a tool to help you promote more events, hence increase tax revenues, not destroy the potential. Virginia is considered business friendly, not anti business. Now the confusion should be cleared up.
What you have here are tools if used properly become a wonderful new friend. Use them the wrong way and you have a nightmare where everyone loses. Anyone want to buy an ugly oil painting of Elvis? I can't seem to unload this stock anywhere.
The job an attorney does well is create ambiguous meaning to words. That's what all the college training is really about. I spent hours and hours going over these laws and was able to create a real nasty monster over it all. I was being ambiguous. I had to step back and look at the entire picture as a whole to see what it really meant. Now I am actually excited over all the possibilities, not threatened by them. I realized that it's not ambiguous after all. While I was being ambiguous, I saw the threat that anyone in a sales position can fall under these laws and an abusive ordinance could make criminals out of ordinary working people. And that is a reality. This is a great example of why our country is in such a mess and why government continues to grow and not shrink.
Ambiguity has many nasty potentials. What the county actually has here is what I would imagine anyone in government got into the job for to begin with. Something very exciting and not threatening. Re work the ordinance with the proper groundwork laid first and you have one of the most incredible tools at your fingertips that you can be proud to scream out to everyone about.
You can actually lay the groundwork for alternative forms of business to incubate from. Test the grounds at a low cost. This is an opportunity for Gloucester to take a very serious statewide lead on and change the nation. I would hazard a guess that most localities have no clue how these laws really work or should be applied. Step up and show them. What legacy would you leave behind? One where you worked against business that destroyed your tax base? Or one that you built a mountain of cash from because you saw the right opportunity for everyone to win and structured the right framework for that to happen? I already know where you can increase your revenues right away from structuring the ordinance properly, but will not divulge such until I see it done and at reasonable rates.
As far as 58.1-3717 actually applying to event planning, it has nothing to do with it. An event can be held that has no merchants and no admittance fees or financial collections this licensing tax would in no way apply. But I would imagine you all understand that. Entertainment events held to bring people into a particular store or area is very beneficial and raises gross sales receipts. It should be encouraged. It should also be planned properly for the intended purpose. Street entertainers should also be encouraged. Imagine having people sitting around playing guitars in the courthouse circle. It's like a free concert. It attracts people. If people throw money in their cases, look the other way.
Allow local merchants to set up tables at the courthouse circle area to sell foods and drinks at local concerts. If it works, charge them a small fee in the future for the space and it allows people to get to know the local merchants. Everyone wins. More events, more opportunities more revenues. Don't wait for opportunities, make them. Not everything will work. Or it may work some days and fail in others. You have no idea until you try.

Our Update Not Sent To The County.
  I once again read the newspaper article on how this all came about.  It was brought about by the commissioner of revenue, Kevin Wilson.  Mr Wilson did not read 58.1-3717 properly and did not further read 58.1-3703 afterwards that explains all of this.  I'm not blaming or faulting anyone.  I spent hours reading and re reading all the laws.  The second key was in 58.1-3703 that confirmed the gross sales receipts tax collection mentioned above.  These laws are tricky and not easy to understand.  On the one hand, Mr Wilson was not wrong about the merchants should prove they are legally entitled to do business in the state of Virginia, but that should have been in the application for reserving space ahead of time.  The $500.00 fee was way off though.  The reason it was never done in the past?  It was better to collect the revenue on the gross sales receipts.  It's one or the other.  Not both.
  I had a great teacher growing up.  This guy sat the entire class down and he took out a book of matches.  He said, I know you all know how to light a match, and we did, but pretend I am an alien from another world and explain to me how to light a match.  We could not do it.  Every step we told him to take, he took like an idiot alien.  It was amazing.  When you are looking at law, you have to try and get into the head of the person who wrote it to try and figure out what they were really trying to communicate because many times it's like trying to explain to aliens how to light a match.  You can show them, but if you were texting them, they would never get it.  So you dig for keys.  Oftentimes, your education gets right in your way.  It's right in front of you but if your mind is not in the right frame, you miss it over and over and over again.
  We hope this helps county officials to get everything straight.  Again, it's one thing to complain, it's another to get involved and help out when it's needed.  Before we asked them what legacy they wanted to leave, we asked that of ourselves.  I am continuing to look into all the laws surrounding this matter as this is a new area for me.  I am not an attorney by any means but I am capable of reading and understanding law in many areas.  There are some very complex laws here that need further work.  
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Thursday, May 2, 2013

Gloucester, VA - County Officials Throw Nasty Surprise At Daffodil Fest Vendors

Seal of Gloucester County, Virginia
Seal of Gloucester County, Virginia (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Gloucester County officials have a good deal of vendors that participated in the Daffodil festival very upset and seriously reconsidering whether to come back next year.  Why?  A nasty little surprise sent to food vendors after the event.  That little surprise cuts into what profits may have been made by food vendors.  Now it's fair to say that every vendor would know to collect the 5% state sales tax on prepared food.  The nasty surprise is the county now asking for an additional 4% local tax on prepared food.

  The question isn't whether or not it's legal.  The issue is that not all localities in the state of Virginia have additional local taxes on prepared foods.  Those that do have varying taxes.  It's not at all uniform across the state at any level.  For Gloucester, VA that extra tax is 4%.  At no time did the county notify any of the food vendors of this extra tax and or the need to collect it.  We have both a letter from Kevin Wilson, Commissioner of Revenue below asking to collect that extra amount along with all the rules and regulations provided to the vendors on this site to show that at no time did the county ever notify the vendors of this required tax collection.

  So now vendors have no choice but to pay the extra 4% sales tax to the county  that was not collected by them.  That comes out of any profits that may have been made at the festival by any of the food vendors.  The vendor that supplied us with this letter is steaming mad and doubts ever coming back.  All this on top of the county at the last minute suspending rules for collecting an additional $500.00 per vendor to even show up and work in the county that county officials have always failed to follow through with anyway.

  This vendor told us, had the county tried to collect that additional $500.00, there would be no way to even consider setting up at the festival.  Vendors would have to pay extra money out of their own pockets and operate at a loss to do so.  County officials gone insane?  That's the common question asked by vendors when they learned about the $500.00 extra last minute fees the county did suspend at the last minute.

  Future vendors coming into Gloucester County should take warning here.  You may just be in for a financial surprise you didn't count on and not in your favor either.

KEVIN A. WILSON
Commissioner of the Revenue
COUNTY OF GLOUCESTER, VIRGINIA 6489 Main Street
Suite 137
Gloucester, Virginia 23061
(804) 693-3451 Office
(804) 693-3581 Fax
April 15, 2013

Re: 2013 Daffodil Festival

Dear Business Owner:

I refer to the recent 2013 Daffodil Festival held in Gloucester County where you
attended as a vendor. This office administers business licensing, prepared food and beverage and the audit of sales tax. To that end I have enclosed a form to gather information to ascertain your liability to none of the above taxes or some depending on your answers to the questionnaire.

Vendors selling food are required to collect the Virginia 5% sales tax, unless
classified by the IRS as a nonprofit 501C3 entity, and collect the County 4% prepared food and beverage tax on prepared food only. All retail merchants are required to register with the Virginia Department of Taxation and collect sales tax in accordance with their policies and state law. All vendors, other than non-profits, are required to hold a business license with a locality in the Commonwealth of Virginia to prosecute a business.

In order to collect this information in a timely manner I would like to thank you in
advance for your cooperation in returning the questionnaire/form on or before May 1, 2013.
If you have additional questions please feel free to contact our office at (804) 693-1319 or (804) 693-3451.

Kevin A. Wilson
Commissioner of the Revenue
KAW

Vendor Information: http://www.gloucesterva.info/ParksandRecreation/DaffodilFestival/VendorInformation/tabid/353/Default.aspx  Web site link.


Daffodil Festival Vendor Information
Festival is held Rain or Shine
DAFFODIL FESTIVAL VENDORS EMAIL REMINDERS LIST  
Please join our list to receive monthly reminders on deadlines, forms and the festival.   
Please add me to the email reminder system.
Since we have several email reminders list please include "Vendors Reminder List" in your email.

VENDOR QUESTIONS???Original Handcrafts & Fine Arts - Juried Show.  All items must be made by the applicant.  Fee: $150.00 for a 10x10 space.    Deadline to apply is January 11, $20 fee for late applications.  Please add me to the email reminder system.  PRINTABLE FORM
FOOD COURT - Application fees - $30/frontage foot for commercial vendors and $15/frontage foot for non-profit vendors.  Forms will be posted October 1.  Deadline to apply is January 4.   Please add me to the email reminder system.
MERCHANDISERS - This area is for sales/display of manufactured goods or handmade items that were made by someone other than the vendor.  Fee: $150.00 for a 10x10 space.  Deadline to apply is January 11, $20 fee for late applications.   Please add me to the email reminder system.   PRINTABLE FORM
NON-PROFITS -  This area is for local Non-Profit groups to set up displays about their efforts, demonstrations, membership drives or sales.   Fee: $75 for a 10 x 10 space.   Deadline to apply is January 11, $20 fee for late applications.  Please add me to the email reminder system.  PRINTABLE FORM
PRINTABLE W-9 FORM (54KB)  ALL APPLICATIONS MUST INCLUDE A COMPLETED W-9 FORM, WE ARE CO-SPONSORED BY GLOUCESTER COUNTY AND IT IS A REQUIREMENT OF THEIR ACCOUNTING SYSTEM.
GENERAL INFORMATION FOR ALL VENDORS:
  • vendor must provide tables, chairs, booths, tents, etc.
  • vendor must provide full and accurate descriptions of their wares
  • vendor must be set up by 9 am on Saturday and 11:30 am on Sunday
  • vendor may not begin packing up until 5:00 pm on Saturday or 5:00 pm on Sunday
  • vendor must park in designated areas only - parking in public spaces takes a parking space away from YOUR CUSTOMERS
  • vendor must provide full address, self addressed stamped envelope, payment and FIN or SS number
  • vendor must NOT offer ANY shirt or sweatshirt of any kind with daffodils in the design
  • vendor must NOT use the trademarked "Daffodil Festival" in any way on their wares
  • vendor must clean up their assigned space - trash bags will be supplied and dumpsters will be on site
  • vendor must realize there are no refunds due to weather
  • vendor must realize that if conditions become unsafe during the festival, due to acts of mother nature, violence or other catastrophic event that is out of the hands of the Daffodil Festival Committee, the festival will be canceled with no refunds
  • On a good weather day, we expect to have 10 to 15 thousand visitors. 
  • On a bad weather day, we expect to have 5 to 7 thousand visitors.
  • Lodging in Gloucester County


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For all the latest news, please click on the Home button towards the top of this site.
Have a news story? Submit it above.
Some of Gloucester's most incredible history is found on this site in detail.
Gloucester, VA Links and News – A GVLN Website.
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