Student Days?
Looking at the web site of the Ohio Renaissance Festival, you might wonder why there is a link to “Student Days”. After all, if you follow that link you will see only one date for the 2010 season: September 30. Perhaps they should change the title to “Student Day”.
To verify this you can visit the link on the Student Days page titled “Dates”. Again Peter, you should really change that to “Day”.
http://www.renfestival.com/asp/student-dates.aspx
Not that many people other than Peter Carroll are crying over this loss, but it wasn’t always that way. First there were three student days, then two student days, and now one student day. Imagine the revenue Peter Carroll and the Ohio Renaissance Festival have lost as a result. I don’t have to imagine I know the amount is huge. How huge? Well I suspect it is part of Peter Carroll’s more than quarter million dollar law suit against me. You know, the one that has scared me to death, shut this web site down, and stop the protest. Oh wait, not scared, web site running, and protest is more effective than ever. How effective? Well, there is only one student day this coming season and evidently Peter Carroll claims the protest is responsible for that matter and he has lost tons of money as a result. Could this be true?
Is there Property / School Tax Evasion involved?
As we have been reporting for some time, there seems to be a serious property / school tax problem with Peter Carroll, the Ohio Renaissance Festival, and Brimstone Limited Partnership. Brimstone Limited Partnership appears to be another one of the incorporations owned & run by Peter Carroll in the seemingly never-ending corporate structure which runs the Ohio Renaissance Festival. Essentially, Brimstone Limited Partnership seems to own the plot of land on which ORF Inc. operates.
http://orfprotest.com/orf-tax-issued.html
The short of the problem is that despite the fact that the Ohio Renaissance Festival has seen ongoing improvements, additions, and renovations; there has been virtually no change to the property record since 1996. Dan Roth, ORF Inc. management has bragged about the tens of thousands of dollars spent to tear down the front gate structure and replace it, but the property record doesn’t reflect the improvement. Statements by Peter Carroll indicate that he collects real estate tax from each building owner, but many if not most of those buildings seem to be completely missing from the property record. As that property record is used to assess the real estate / school taxes on the Ohio Renaissance Festival, it seems rather clear that Peter Carroll’s incorporations are not paying their fair share of the property tax. Evidently, many schools and in particular the parents of home schooled kids are a wee bit upset about this information.
If you are a property owner, you should be upset about it too. Why should a middle income home owner pay property tax at a rate inflated because multi million dollar incorporations seem to hide their property from the tax man?
If you are a patron of the Ohio Renaissance Festival’s Student Day, you are giving your money to a corporate structure, which simply doesn’t seem to care about your children’s education. You are supporting the very entity, by one name or another, which seems to be cheating your children out of proper funding for their education.
Evidently, many schools and parents feel the same way. After all, it seems that since this protest started the profitability of Student Days has dwindles so much that it has become a one day event & Peter Carroll himself blames this protest. So contradulations folk. You have asserted your legal right to protest, to boycott, and to bring a multi million-dollar incorporation to its knees.
I think you will agree with me, if the Ohio Renaissance Festival is in ruin, it is because its owner Peter Carroll ruined it. Maybe he should sue his own dumb self.
3 Comments to “Student Days?” »
RSS feed for comments on this post. | Trackback
November 14th, 2009 at 10:35 am
I by no means wish to minimize the importance or necessity of this protest, only to emphasize as the administrator of this blog has in earlier posts that Mr. Carroll has only himself (and perhaps circumstance) to blame for the Student Day debacle. Attendance in student days has been on the wane for about five years, far longer than the lifespan of this protest site. Of course, it is this attendance (booked long in advance) that motivates the number of days the Faire should be open to students.
Having been involved in student days directly, as well as worked with educators deciding whether or not to attend, I can tell you it all comes down to financial cost vs. perceived academic benefit. For the exorbitant cost of gas, bus maintenance, and a student Faire package that includes a coupon for a soda and a hot dog, students are treated to an inferior experience - even by ORF standards. The shows are mostly cobbled together family-friendly bits by performers not used to working on weekdays, and the crafters are forced to push $5 trinkets, de-legitimizing their craft to make a buck off some kids. The real benefit in this nightmare scenario goes to kids looking for out-of-the-way places to smoke. Those are the real martyrs to the loss of Student Days. Not Peter Carroll, I heard that guy’s an asshole anyway.
November 25th, 2009 at 2:12 am
Horace Fister
You sir are very well spoken. So if I understand you right, Peter Carroll and the Ohio Renaissance Festival should be suing Peter Carroll, not me, for the quarter million dollars in losses? Hmmm, I wonder if the incorporation can sue the primary stock holder for his conducting of the corporation…..
January 16th, 2010 at 8:23 pm
Thought you would be interested in knowing that the festival this year will be 1 weekend shorter. Only 7 weekends this year. Interesting, huh?