The following appeared in a memo from a budget planner for the city of Grandview."When the Grandview Symphony was established ten years ago, the city of Grandview agreed to provide the symphony with annual funding until the symphony became self-sustaining

Eliminating the city funding of the symphony could be a good conclusion from the facts. But the author makes a number of unsubstantiated assumptions about the audience which is reached by the symphony. Based on these assumptions, the author makes his/her bold proposal of retiring the funding of the symphony given by the city.

The author's first mistake is to assume because the private contributions has tripled, it shows that the symphony does not need the annual funding anymore. The author points out that after hiring an internationally known conductor, the private contributions increased. It does not imply; however, that the quantity of the contributions be the necessary. Perhaps, only one enterprise used to support the symphony with a small quantity and when the conductor was hired, this firm tripled the quantity. Nevertheless, this is still an small quantity which does not serve for paying all the needs of the symphony. If the author had given the exact quantity which is given to the symphony and this proves that the symphony does not need more funding for its needs, this had strengthened his/her argument.

Secondly, the author leaves many other unanswered questions. The author contends that the attendance at symphony's outdoor summer concert series reached record highs. However, it is not a right prove to demonstrate that the symphony became self-sustaining. What about the concerts in other seasons? Do they leave the same revenue than the outdoor summer concert series concerts? Perhaps, few people go to the other concerts and during that time the symphony needs the funding from the city. It is possible that the profits earned during summer do not cover all the needs for all the year. In addition, the argument does not mention the exact quantity of profits earned during summer. If the argument had presented the exact quantity of money reached by the symphony, and this implies that this will cover all the needs for all the year, the argument would be more persuasive.

Finally, the conclusion that the symphony has succeeded in finding audience at present, is unsupported. Even if we accept the two reasons given by the author, this argument mentions only information corresponding to the last two years. Then, this is a recent "picture" of the audience. What happened if next month, the conductor goes away and there is no more audience since then? It is necessary to have a record for more years to definitely show an audience which likes to go symphony concerts.

Because the author fails into creating a solid case which demonstrates that the symphony could be self-sustaining, the argument is not persuasive enough to conclude that the funding from the city must be retired.