spent almost half a million dollars on the party, The Royal Gazette has learned.

And the party cost $90,000 more than the $400,000 originally budgeted by the Corporation, although organisers said the deficit was made up by a $50,000 cash injection from Government and sponsorship from local companies, leaving the City with a total bill of $320,000.

Corporation of Hamilton secretary Roger Sherratt yesterday said he was unable to precisely state where the cost overruns occurred, but added that a block party and fireworks display were not in the original plans.

"Our original budget excluded the block party,'' he said. "The Corporation was going to put on the boat parade again, have the moonlight parade and the concert.

"A group of professional event planners were going to be brought in from overseas to organise events for the West End Development Corporation, the Corporation of St. George's and us, but all three groups were encouraged by the Government to organise their own events after that proposal fell through,'' he said.

Local event planner Geneva Humdy-Woodley was retained by the Corporation and a decision to host a day-long block party and a fireworks display was adopted, while the boat parade was dropped.

The hefty costs were offset by sponsorship Mrs. Humdy-Woodley was able to obtain from local companies and a $50,000 injection from Government.

Final costs to the Corporation of Hamilton are in the region of $320,000 which Mr. Sherratt said were completely affordable.

Mrs. Humdy-Woodley said the costs could have been cut further with more planning time.

"Please recognise that an event of this magnitude usually takes between nine months and a year to organise,'' she said, "and I was only hired in October to organise this.

"I did try to secure corporate sponsorship but had the challenge that many businesses had long committed their budgets elsewhere.'' Mr. Sherratt said Mrs. Humdy-Woodley was brought on board when the Corporation realised the event was getting too large to handle alone.

Millennium Stressing that costs would have been considerably higher if a popular foreign recording artist had been brought in, Mr. Sherratt applauded the corporation's decision to stick to local talent.

"We were told quite a bit that we would need to bring in an overseas performer for the celebrations,'' he said.

"But I must point out that that would have cost several thousands of dollars.

Our decision to go with Jonathan Trott who harnessed the local talent, was definitely the way to go and led to one of the biggest positives of the day.

"I think it was the finest concert Bermuda has ever seen featuring local entertainers.''