You can’t put a price on some things. In the case of big, multi-day events that bring thousands of visitors to Fountain Hills, how do you gauge benefits that maybe can’t have a dollar sign attached?

That’s the question being posed by the Town Council as members debate whether or not certain community events should be exempt from paying fees to be hosted in town.

The examples being kicked around include the two big art fairs and Oktoberfest. These events are hosted by outside entities and all make use of the downtown area for multiple days. In the past, they have been labeled “legacy” events, meaning the organizers don’t have to pay the traditional fee associated with hosting an event in town. (See our 1A coverage for more details.)

As Councilman David Spelich pointed out during the May 21 meeting, waiving fees for these legacy events costs the town $26,000 per year. But as Councilman Art Tolis and former Mayor Sharon Morgan argued, that figure needs to be compared against other considerations that are harder to assign a direct value to. Morgan gave an example of one such unknown benefit, saying she has no idea how many residents have moved to Fountain Hills after being introduced to the community through these major events.

We at The Times faced a similar quandary several years back, though admittedly on a much smaller scale. As social media became more prevalent, the staff debated whether or not a bigger push should be made on sites like Facebook. Facebook’s policies make it very difficult to legally advertise on the site itself, so it was clear from the beginning that having employees spend time working on Facebook posts would not have a direct return on investment. In other words, we could spend work hours beefing up our Facebook presence, but there was little (if any) opportunity to make actual money through social media.

In the end it was decided that there are currencies other than cash, and that it was worth putting in a little time to make sure our presence on Facebook was more robust. It builds name recognition, it reminds residents and advertisers of our offerings and, more importantly, sites like Facebook give us another avenue to combat misinformation and provide readers (even those who don’t yet pay for it) with the facts.

Similar to Morgan’s statement at the recent town council meeting, we have no idea how many subscribers or advertisers we’ve gained simply because of our activity on Facebook. It’s something we can’t put a dollar value on. But if more people read the news, share the facts or simply know our name because of it, then we figure the benefits surely outweigh the cost.