Download this page in PDF formatNew Contract Discovered From Music Festival
Baruch and Gayton
Desert Hot Springs, CA - We have over 1,000 pages of documents related to the music festival from our public information request to the city. We were told that was all the documents, that there were no more. Now we find the city has been holding back. There is another company involved in the debacle that cost the city more than $500,000. For some reason there has been reluctance by the city to reveal that. It slipped out, however, and we now have the name of that company. Music Driven Productions.
To people that have followed the music festival saga, the name Baruch Gayton is a familiar one. They are the ones that originally held up Tony Clarke, touted his credentials and to the bitter end kept telling the city council that the festival was OK. We recently discovered they were paid over $40,000 not as Baruch Gayton, but as a front company. Baruch Gayton set up Music Driven Productions, a company that has as its principals Baruch and Gayton.
Baruch and Gayton making pitch at city council meeting
After the 2010 music festival failure, the city created a new Music Festival Committee in 2011. That Committee is now revealing the city is not attempting to recover the money paid to Tony Clarke of Marina Del Ray even though a recovery of money spent by Clarke may be recoverable.
Linda Lennon Roth is an experience event promoter and Music Festival Committee Member. Rick Daniels is the city manager for Desert Hot Springs.
RICK DANIELS: Candidly, I don’t know how we get much further on this without being in litigation.
LENNON-ROTH: Oh, I do. First of all, I’d ask specifically who Music Driven Productions was. Everyone keeps saying that they were the arm of this…
DANIELS: Baruch-Gayton.
LENNON-ROTH: Yes, okay. But there’s no agreement. And there’s forty-some thousand dollars in checks that go to those people. Now, you have an assignment. Tony [Clarke] assigned all of the assets, correct? So you theoretically should have an assignment of that agreement.
DANIELS: Correct, but here’s the problem I’m running into. We cannot get this guy to perform.
LENNON-ROTH: You don’t have to get him to perform. You have the attorney or an accountant – you have a city accountant, I’m sure. You know, I’ve received a lot of audit letters before, and I’m sure you have. “Is this a correct statement of your account, etc.” And, you would send them that letter, and you would say “Your agreement has been assigned and would you please verify that you did receive these funds on these dates.”
DANIELS: Got it.
LENNON-ROTH: If you send that to these people, the B&G people [Baruch-Gayton] I’ll bet you a hundred dollars that they don’t even know who Music Driven Productions is.
The meeting ended without any action undertaken to attempt recovering $40,000.
