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Staycation declared a success |
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Friday, 05 September 2008 |
First Labor Day celebration in Benton draws at least 5,000
Coordinators of Benton’s first Staycation celebration are proclaiming the Labor Day event a success.
“Things went unbelievably smooth for a first-year event,” Jill Jones, executive director of the city’s Advertising and Promotion Commission, said.
“There were so few problems that they’re really not worth mentioning,” she said. “Any problem was solved within about five minutes.”
Jones estimated that 5,000 people attended the day-long event at Tyndall Park.
“We needed more wristbands in the play areas because we ran out before 1 p.m.,” she said. “We had 800 of the bands and ran out in the first three hours, which indicates the volume of people present.”
The only thing Jones would do differently, she said, “is have more signage for directing people to the various events.”
“I didn’t have a single complaint — not one,” Jones said. “The parks and recreation department people were amazing and the Mayor’s Youth Council was amazing. Everybody did the jobs they were assigned to do and everything went unbelievably smoothly.”
The lack of complaints “is a testimonial to the people we had helping, which is that everyone was doing exactly what they were supposed to be doing,” Jones said.
“And everybody had a good time,” she added. “The rain held off, thankfully. Not a single drop of rain fell, but we knew there was a front coming in. We took the last band off the stage half an hour early and started the fireworks half an hour ahead of schedule.”
Jones commended Ed Albares for his assistance.
“We couldn’t have done this without him, or without Angela Ross, Jill Johnson, Billy Henley and the youth council,” she said.
“We never tripped a single power circuit throughout the event ... I prayed about this event every day for the last eight weeks. It was a ton of hard work and all of us are pretty much worn out, but it was great.”
“We’re really excited and ready to start planning next year’s event. Hopefully, the commission will want to do it again because the consensus was that it was a huge success. We’ll have to see how the budget looks. Maybe next year we’ll have time to form a committee in the spring.”
Jones said she received “a lot of positive feedback from people attending.”
She thanked members of the A&P Commission for their help at the event.
“Most of the members helped set up stage and some helped break it down,” Jones said. “I want to thank them for allowing us to do this ... for the city and surrounding area.”
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Razorbacks
