Small fee increase makes a big difference to family business
By Nancy Needham nancy@theacorn.com

A $2-a-seat user fee might prevent Thousand Oaks residents from hearing renowned personalities like Whoopi Goldberg, Maya Angelou or Mikhail Gorbachev speak locally.

The Distinguished Speaker Series has brought such notables to the Civic Arts Plaza in Thousand Oaks in the past, but might not be willing to continue doing so if the City Council votes, as suggested during the March 20 meeting, to charge $2 more per seat for what is being called a subscription ticket facility charge.

The series is actually a small family business co-owned by Kathy Winterhalder.

"A $2 fee will have a large impact on our Distinguished Speaker Series and will affect our viability to staying in Thousand Oaks," Winterhalder said.

Each ticket holder is required to purchase tickets to all seven of the speaker performances in the series. Most people purchase at least two subscriptions at a time, which would mean a $28- or 5 percent- increase in the price, she said.

Such an increase could cause the small business to have fewer patrons.

"Last season our speaker fees went up 20 percent, we raised prices 10 percent and lost 30 percent of our customers," Winterhalder said.

"We count every penny- an increase could affect quality or force us to close," she said.

The company also serves venues in Redondo Beach and Pasadena, and circumstances unique to the theatre in Thousand Oaks have already made offering the series here more expensive for them, Winterhalder said.

The theater in Thousand Oaks has fewer seats. And because the upperlevel audience has difficulty seeing the speakers, it costs the company about $20,000 more to rent a camera and pay a camera technician to enlarge the image on a big-screen projector. Also, because the city holds the company's money for at least six months, Thousand Oaks collects the interest instead of the owners of the series, she said.

The series is now in its 11th season. Over the years celebrities Robert Redford, Pulitzer Prize-winner Doris Kearns Goodwin and Tim Russert, moderator of NBC's "Meet the Press," have come to speak.

Also included in the series have been the Dalai Lama, Margaret Thatcher, Colin Powell, Rudy Giuliani, Madeleine Albright, Henry Kissinger, Barbara Bush, Rosalynn Carter, Walter Cronkite, John Glenn, Jane Goodall, Bob Woodward and Dave Barry.