Wacky Saturday will not be taking to Main Street this year after Westlock town council decided to stop funding the festival through Family and Community Support Services (FCSS).
Last year Wacky Saturday received $8,000 in funding.
Mayor Ralph Leriger explained councillors opted to stop funding the street festival through FCSS because it doesn’t fit the organization’s mandate.
“We feel that’s a stretch under the criteria of the funding for (FCSS’s) mandate,” he said, adding FCSS meant to deliver social programming, not assist businesses.
Leriger said councillors did not dismiss the festival’s ability to draw families outside and onto Main Street for a summer afternoon. It was just considering what Wacky Saturday was at its heart, it didn’t make sense to have the FCSS budget providing the resources to run the festival.
The decision to put Wacky Saturday on hiatus for at least this year came during deliberations for the 2014 budget.
Councillors decided if the festival were to continue, its funding would have to come out of another segment of the budget, but there were no available dollars to make that change.
Following the decision to put Wacky Saturday on hiatus for at least this year, town manger Dean Krause said there was no attempt to keep the festival going by having community groups take up the torch.
“The town formally didn’t go out and ask other groups,” Krause said. “That’s not saying other groups cannot take the initiative.”
As an example, since the festival “had a strong economic development aspect for the downtown businesses,” he said there was nothing stopping the businesses from banding together and putting their own spin on a new Wacky Saturday.
To Leriger’s knowledge, however, nobody came forward to pick up the slack, either for later this year or into the future.
If businesses or other community groups were to come forward, he said he and the town would be willing to lend a hand to make that happen.
“I’m open to talking to businesses about it if they are interested,” he said.
Even though councillors opted to take a step back from holding Wacky Saturday this year, they are still interested in having events in Westlock.
“Maybe it’s time for Westlock to reinvent itself,” Leriger said.
It just comes down to “what events does the town want to have and what do our citizens want,” Krause explained.
In order to determine what events the town could host and would be interested in hosting, he said the town plans to put some of its committees to good use.
“It’s also in our plans to rejuvenate the economic development community, plus the recreation and culture committee,” he said.
Once those committees start meeting regularly, they’ll look at Wacky Saturday and other events to see which ones work and are worth continuing in the future.
The committees will hopefully bring their recommendations back to council in time for budget consultations for the 2015 budget in October, Krause said.
