Railroad Daze Committee defends its actions

Letter to the Editor,
We are writing this letter in response to the article in last week's paper in regards to the Railroad Daze Committees decisions for this year's festival. We would like to address the information that the Rainy River Record wrote and published May 26, 2009.
This year, Railroad Daze is working on a very limited budget and part of that budget, as the Record reported, was $2000.00 given by the Town. That funding was given to Railroad Daze committee to help cover the cost of advertising. This amount in noway covers the total cost of our advertising. The committee decided that we would have to fundraiser to supplement this budget, and part of the fundraising was selling Railroad Daze T-shirts and an advertising brochure.
The T-shirts were printed out of town but not south of the border. We asked the high school if they could have supplied the t-shirts but we were told they were too busy. So the committee decided, because of time constraints, that we would purchase out printed T-shirts from a company in Southern Ontario. We were unaware of any other local businesses selling T-shirts. If stores don't advertise this service how could we know.
The Advertising brochure was another fundraising idea created by the Railroad Daze Committee to raise funds to pay for the cost of entertainment for the children and adults.
The committee received two different quotes. As these two businesses print their material in the same place (Fort Frances) the committee felt that it would not take business away from Rainy River. The winning quote was for $350.25 which was $344.25 less than the other quote.
We, as a committee, try very hard to support all our local businesses in all our functions. When we have to go outside of Rainy River, we try hard to stay within the district. We hope this has cleared up a lot of questions people had for the Railroad Daze Committee and hope that you will still support is as we are trying really hard to put on a great event for the Town of Rainy River. I also want to thank all the volunteers who put in endless hours for all our events and without our volunteers, none of these events would be possible.
If anyone has a issue concerning Railroad Daze or other volunteer base committees, please talk to the group first to get the facts before assumptions are made. There is a lot of work involved in these committees and not enough thanks are given to our volunteers.
Thank you,
Anthony Mason,
Railroad Daze Committee

Editor's Note:
In response to this letter, here are a few points from our perspective:
1. After receiving more information last week about the bids for the brochure from the RR Daze Committee we discovered the committee was comparing apples to oranges. Our bid included all production costs of the brochure and the other company's bid required the brochure to be camera ready. If the brochure was brought to us camera ready the cost of our bid would be approx. $200 less and we had agreed to reduce the original quote by $50. In recalculating the cost of our quote without the production costs and our price reduction we feel our quote would be $94.25 more than the other company.
2. While we do print our job work in Fort Frances, the same as the other company, the money sent to our printing plant comes back to Rainy River in the form of three paid jobs.
3. We were told by a representative of the Railroad Daze Committee last Monday that the t-shirts were made in the U.S.
4. The Record has donated to Railroad Daze for more than 20 years. The difference in the bids is in our opinion not enough to justify taking the business out of the community in lieu of what we give back on a regular basis.