July 4 festival not happening for second year in a row in Dayton

DAYTON — The City of Dayton will not have a Fourth of July festival to go with the fireworks for a second year in a row.

City leaders told News Center 7 that modern workplace realities make the festival impossible now.

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“Our experience with our festival is 30,000 to 50,000 people, depending on the weather,” Joe Parlette, Deputy City Manager, said.

Parlette said that a city-sponsored event like the festival is all on the back of city workers and staffing problems are a big issue.

“I saw we have 161 vacancies in our organization,” he said.

Parlette said it’s not just the police department involved in the festival. It’s also the fire department, street maintenance, recreation, and trash pickup.

People like Kasandra Frazier are sad the festival won’t be happening.

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“That’s sad because kids won’t have the same memories we had back in the day,” she said.

Mark Weaver thinks there are enough volunteers or community service workers that could step in but city leaders said that since this is a city-sponsored event, they would have to be subject to background checks like regular employees. They said the real issue is that they have to concentrate on providing the services residents expect and demand and that’s already demanding overtime from exhausted workers.

“We’ve experienced so much overtime that people just don’t want to work any more overtime,” Parlette said.

While there won’t be a large festival, the city is exploring adding other nighttime attractions.

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