It was brought to our attention last night at our planning committee meeting that an article was recently published, which encourages voters to vote "NO" on a referendum that would allow $1500.00 of town appropriated funds to be used for the Lebanon Festival.
The article, which you can read
HERE, was written by someone who did not take the time to speak to a committee member to find out why we are asking for these funds. The author instead accuses us of not understanding "volunteerism" and not utilizing our community teens in need of community service. Unfortunately, some of you may have read that article and taken his advice and voted "no" on referendum 1.
If you have not yet voted, I ask you to listen for a moment, and understand why we are asking for the funds. The committee is made up of a very small group of residents in Lebanon who are VOLUNTEERING their time to put together a family-friendly festival that will provide fun for the community. We do not get paid, nor do we expect to be paid. We have been, from the beginning of planning for the 2015 festival (which began back in February), in the process of coordinating with the high school to get students to come and volunteer their time while earning some community service hours. Since February we have been working very hard to bring in donations from our community businesses and have been very successful. We are so thankful to live in such a generous community. We are also working very hard to bring in vendors and help local business owners promote their businesses.
Our reason for asking the town to set aside money is so that we can begin lining up our entertainment early, before they become booked up for the season. If we wait on the money from donors to come in, we run the risk of not being able to book people. For instance, we would love to reserve a band for next year's festival but without the money for a down payment, we can't do that. If we had $1500 in the account we would be able to reserve them. We have lots of ideas to make the day a day that the community looks forward to but entertainment is rarely cheap and almost never free. As it stands, what we are able to raise in a year, goes toward the cost of that current year's expenses, leaving us with very little in reserve for the following year.
We want the Lebanon Festival to be a day that is positive for our community; please join with us in spreading that message! Help us out by voting YES on 1 if you have not voted already.
Sincerely,
Your Lebanon Festival Committee
*** While you are reading, I want to take a moment and clear up a lie that has been going around. Recently we received an email from a vendor attending this year's festival that she was not pleased to hear we were charging ALL vendor's $40 to come to the festival. This is just not accurate at all and whoever is spreading this around is not linked to the festival or it's planning. What is accurate is that vendors can reserve space for the festival at a cost of either $25 or $40, depending on the size space they choose. All Lebanon municipalities are
FREE. It's unfortunate that our vendors are reading things about the festival on Facebook sites that are not linked at all with the Lebanon Festival. We are asking you, our community, to please come to this website to get your factual information about the Lebanon Festival. You can reach any of the committee members by using the email address at the top of the page. We will respond and answer any of your questions and clear up any misconceptions.
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The Lebanon Festival Committee is excited to announce that we will be having Ron Raiselis, the cooper for Strawberry Banke in Portsmouth, NH with us all day at the Lebanon Festival! Ron is one of the few active cooper's in New England and is a wonderful addition to our festival.
