Attempting to shake off the last days of summer heat — now that school has started and Fall promises to show up soon — Shawnee residents are eagerly shifting their gaze to two of the community’s most popular and well-attended events: the annual Halloween festival and Christmas parade.
This year, however, who will take on organization of those events is up in the air at the moment; it is unclear if they will proceed as expected – or what shape they will take.
After longtime organizer Safe Events For Families (SEFF) bowed out of the task, Community Renewal of Pottawatomie County (CRPC) took on the effort the past two years, but CRPC chose not to seek the contract this Fiscal Year, which began July 1.
“The significant loss of State Department of Education (OSDE) funding last year and the loss of staff, as a result, left us shorthanded to the point that we could not adequately organize those important events,” CRPC Executive Director Brandon Dyer said.
The city, since it did not secure an event contract recently put out two RFPs (Request For Proposal) on Aug. 6, hoping someone would pick up the reins.
Advertised on the city website as “Enchanted Woodland,” the RFP soliciting event management services for this year’s Halloween family celebration – recognized in previous years as Boo on Bell or Monster on Main — failed to yield any bids, Shawnee City Manager Andrea Weckmueller-Behringer said.
It was the same fate for the city’s annual Christmas Parade.
RFP bidding for these events ended at 5 p.m. Thursday.
“Unfortunately, the city did not receive any proposals in response to either RFP,” she said. “City staff is getting ready to have additional conversations internally to potentially take on one of the events, and we will also sit down to discuss potential collaboration with a group that has expressed interest in the other event,” she said.
Bets are the interested group is SEFF, after a Facebook post turned up Thursday afternoon by the long-silent group.
“The (SEFF) Board of Directors has met and reviewed the RFP(s) … there are some concerns with the current proposed requests,” SEFF President Dell Kerbs said in the post.
By SEFFs response, it is clear the organization is not even entertaining an attempt to pull together the fall event.
“Understand, there is no pathway for a Boo on Bell this year, as the time to prepare for an event of that size takes months to do,” he said. “There is, however, still time to do a Christmas parade.”
Kerbs said SEFF intends to meet with Weckmueller-Behringer in the next few weeks to ensure Shawnee has a Christmas parade.
Watch for updates.
