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Camarillo has been the director since 2015, he drew high praise during the Lakeland City Commission\u2019s February strategy session for the job he has done the last seven years managing the city-owned multipurpose entertainment\/convention center.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI\u2019m very appreciative of the leadership he provides and the steps he has taken,\u201d Lakeland Mayor Bill Mutz said of Camarillo.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Then Mutz demanded that he cut $800,000 from the $1.8 million subsidies the RP Funding Center projects it will request from the city in next year\u2019s budget, while the commission ponders bringing in a professional venue management company or consultant and fire Camarillo.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Camarillo was trying to figure out how to accommodate Mutz\u2019s demand to increase revenues and\/or decrease costs to fill a prospective $800,000 slash in the city\u2019s annual subsidy for the center.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIt is pretty impossible or very difficult\u201d to cut more money from the center\u2019s operations budget, he said, especially after it slashed nearly $500,000 from payroll by not filling seven vacant full-time positions last year, trimming staff to 42.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe only way we are going to do that is if we eliminate the type of events we do,\u201d such as those that the center sponsors, he said, including the Broadway show series which often require a 16-month advance booking window.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But, Mutz said, \u201cThere is not an appetite\u201d for the city \u201cto suck it up much more\u201d when it comes to subsidizing the RP Funding Center\u2019s operations, adding, \u201cWe have many places we can point to\u201d that could also use city subsidies.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Tony Camarillo kept the RP Funding Center doors open during the past seven years, with a $16 million renovation, negotiated a five-year, $5 million sponsorship with an NBA minor league… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":21024,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_robots_follow":"","_seopress_robots_imageindex":"","_seopress_robots_snippet":"","_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"0","_seopress_robots_breadcrumbs":"","_seopress_robots_freeze_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_custom_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_canonical":"","_seopress_social_fb_title":"","_seopress_social_fb_desc":"","_seopress_social_fb_img":"","_seopress_social_fb_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_height":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_title":"","_seopress_social_twitter_desc":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_height":0,"_seopress_redirections_value":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled_regex":"","_seopress_redirections_logged_status":"","_seopress_redirections_param":"","_seopress_redirections_type":0,"_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","inline_featured_image":false,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"wpai_generated_summary":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"dois","default_image_id":71799,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_wpas_customize_per_network":false},"categories":[12,14],"tags":[2568],"class_list":["post-21022","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local","category-news","tag-rp-funding-center-needs-a-new-leader"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21022","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21022"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21022\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21024"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21022"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21022"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21022"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/08\/mutz_2021-m.jpg?resize=275%2C384&ssl=1\")
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<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n