Franklin’s Town Council voted unanimously to cancel PumpkinFest, the town’s biggest and most successful festival.
The annual fall festival, had a 23-year uninterrupted run, but council members decided that coronavirus-related public restrictions are still too strict to have a traditional festival.
Vice mayor Barbara McRae felt that organizing the festival knowing what they know now would be a waste of time and resources.
“If you put a whole lot of work in and then you can’t do it anyway, then we’ve just lost all of that work,” McRae said. “The odds do not look in our favor.”
Streets of Franklin president Gwen Taylor was understanding about the decision, given how many other events have already been claimed by the pandemic. However, she is optimistic that her organization will find ways to adapt and keep residents active. This summer, they’ve been organizing sidewalk sales with Main Street businesses and getting musicians to play outdoors to encourage more shoppers to take advantage of store reopenings. These events are smaller and more spread out over time, so social distancing is less of a concern.
“We have found that most of the people who are coming into our stores, they’re social distancing, they’re wearing their masks, but it just feels good for them to get out,” Taylor said. “We want to continue all the way through fall and do something every other weekend.”
Cancelling PumpkinFest now will free up significant funding for other projects later this fall. The council members expressed support for shifting some or all of that funding toward Streets of Franklin to replace this year’s PumpkinFest with safer events at a later date when they’ve discussed the subject further.
“We have resources budgeted for PumpkinFest which would be available for good alternatives that would work with the town budget,” council member Joe Collins said. “As best as we can, we will work out a Plan B.”
Streets of Franklin members will meet next week to discuss plans for the rest of the year in more detail.