SPRINGFIELD — For the second year in a row, Springfield has cancelled their popular community festival CultureFest.
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As reported on News Center 7 at 5:30, CultureFest has been a decades-long tradition.
“CultureFest is a long-standing tradition in Springfield. It’s a good one,” Meagan Benne said.
Last year the event was cancelled due to safety concerns from a string of bomb threats against the city, schools and businesses tied to tensions about immigration and social media rumors.
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This year, the city announced that it is cancelled and that the city will no longer put on the event.
“I feel like it’s going to be hard on the community. I mean, it’s something that the community can’t get together on,” Robyn Johnson from Springfield said. “It’s not too much things that we have down here that’s really community-wide.”
News Center 7 spoke with city leaders about their difficult decision.
“Definitely a difficult decision for the city to make to discontinue CultureFest moving forward. Really what prompted this was a focus on essential city services moving forward,” City of Springfield Community Development Director Logan Cobbs said.
These essential services include building regulations, code compliance, planning and zoning, as well as safety and emergency services.
“We, unfortunately, just do not have the capacity at this time to plan such a large-scale event like CultureFest,” Cobbs said.
The city says if another group wants to plan it, they can. Springfield has already received inquiries into planning and executing the event.
“I welcome any inquiries from community partners, nonprofit organizations, community members that would like to see CultureFest continue and to plan it,” Cobbs said. “The City of Springfield will continue to support in than planning effort.”
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