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

The author of the statement above, supports the need for the city to terminate its funding on the Grandview Symphony given that the Symphony succeed its goals by attracting audience and becoming self-sustaining. However, in order to determine whether this proposition would be effective, several implications and assumptions should be examined first.

First of all, according to the text, the author maintains that due to the newly hired internationally known conductor who was able to increase the attendance and attract high profile musicians to perform, the city should stop supporting financially the symphony. However, this statement is based on the equivocal assumption that the income of the concerts can outweigh the cost of each performer. More specifically, the famous conductor and the well known guest musicians can be really expensive, thus most of the earnings of each concert might go to the conductor and musicians. Therefore, the profit of each concert might be very small and as a result the symphony might not be self-sustained. Thus, in order to determine whether the symphony can operate without the city's funding, further information about the profits of each concerts should be given.

Secondly, the author cites the fact that the increasing number of people who attended the summer concert series combined with the increase in private contributions, indicate the need to terminate the city's funding, assuming that the private contributions brought a good income in the symphony and that the earnings of the summer series only were enough for the whole year. To be more precise, each private contributor could have donated a small amount of money and as a result the total amount might not be sufficient for the symphony, despite the number of contributors. Moreover, the symphony needs to perform and practice the whole year, thus, the summer series might be a success, but the earnings gained from other concerts throughout the year insignificant.

Finally, the author states the fact that the symphony found a loyal audience, therefore the city should stop funding them, implying that the earnings from the tickets and private contributors- which are the only stated sources of income- would be enough for the symphony to operates properly. Even though, the symphony might make some extra money, we do not know if those are enough to sustain a group of so many musicians.

In conclusion, from my point of view, as years passes by the symphony will eventually become more self- sustaining, thus, after some years the city can eliminate its funding, but the author bases his opinions on ambiguous implications and assumptions that weakens his arguments.