Longtime Blue Ridge BBQ and Music Festival music chairman Peter Eisenbrown has resigned from the festival board.

“After taking a hard look at the books after last year’s troubles and managing the festival to a respectable profit,” Eisenbrown said, “I felt what the event needed most to be successful moving forward was strong, professional, centralized management. Someone needed to take the reins and be responsible for the overall budget, streamlining the marketing (a huge budget item), and increasing sponsorship.

“I offered the leadership a proposal for that management that would fit the festival’s budget in fact, it would have cost less than what the festival was paying outside contractors to perform just the marketing and sponsorship.

“They decided that they wanted to stay with all-volunteer management and continue to use an outside contractor for the marketing. It simply came down to a difference of opinion on how best to run the event.”

Eisenbrown led a successful effort to keep the festival alive last January when the chamber canceled the event.