podium - I agree - if set designers are paid, costumers should
be as well.

However, I think that MANY community theatres no longer build
their own costumes. There are so many costume houses out
there that will simply ship you a complete set of costumes for
your production of Oliver or Mame or Oklahoma or whatever,
that it's not even financially sound to pay to build them all. I
know one production of Mame that I directed had HUNDREDS
of costumes from Brooks Van Horne (I think the name is
different now) - and the total bill was between 7-8,000. Now
these were fairly elaborate costumes - many exact copies of the
original Broadway costumes - heavily beaded, trimmed, etc.
There is no way i could have had all those costumes built for
that kind of money - not to mention finding the people to
actually DO that many costumes.