(Seguin) — The Seguin City Council wants to give you the freedom to celebrate during the upcoming Fourth of July weekend.
The council gave staff the green light to move forward with the city’s Fireworks Fiesta on Friday, July 3; and the city’s Biggest Small Town Fourth of July Parade in Texas on Saturday, July 4. The move to host both those popular events also paves the way for KWED’s Freedom Fiesta on Thursday, July 2 in Central Park.
The consensus reached by the council on Tuesday night was that both city events should move forward as planned, with a message going out to the public that they should still try to space themselves out to avoid additional spreading of COVID-19.
CVB and Main Street Director Kyle Kramm says staff needed this input from the city, because the events will draw large crowds to downtown Seguin and to Starcke Park for the fireworks show. He says this year’s parade is going to be held on a Saturday, which would normally draw in big crowds. He says the crowds may be impacted because some people may want to avoid crowds during this pandemic, but he says they will have video streaming available for those who want to watch from the comfort of their home.
“You are looking at spectator five rows deep in some places. Ten rows deep in some places especially around Central Park and so there are concerns there of having that large of a crowd and it’s not a confined space but yet, it is current because everyone wants to be right by Austin Street and so we can really advertise that we will be streaming the parade,” said Kramm.
The council was able to reach a decision on the fireworks show fairly quickly, while the parade discussion took a longer time. Councilman Mark Herbold says that the fireworks show should move on, and the city should encourage people to spread out, stick with their family members, and utilize areas around Starcke Park, including the golf course. There was a question about whether or not the city should restrict viewing from the golf course, but Herbold said that would not make sense.
“That wouldn’t be bothering me because everybody has spread out there. Even in the past when we are on there, you don’t want to infringe on people out there, you kind of spread out and I think if we let people know that and they’ve been good. We’ve all been good about social distancing ourselves. Let’s just try to not get too close and keep it spaced out. I think we will be okay,” said Herbold.
Councilman Jeremy Roy says they all think the fireworks show is a good idea, but he also knows that things could change based on what’s happening with COVID-19.
“I think we need to proceed with the fireworks as planned but if we get there and the numbers are up and this thing is not contained, we will have to make some hard decisions at that point,” said Roy.
Council members needed more time on Tuesday night to look at the various options for the parade. One of those options, presented by staff, was to change and lengthen parade route and encourage people to stay in their cars. Police Chief Terry Nichols says his department is prepared to handle whatever situation the council agrees upon, but he said lengthening the parade route created more logistical problems for his officers, and it would do little to really reduce crowd sizes. He says either way, crowds are going to gather and it’s going to be difficult to completely stop them from doing so.
“If our goal is to prevent mass crowding, I don’t think we will have a parade because this will not prevent people from gathering in large places, getting out of their cars — we can’t police that. So you have 300 people show up at one of these large parking lots, they all get out of their cars and line the street which they are going to, there’s nothing we can do to prevent that. We can’t police that. Could we do it the normal way? I don’t think we can police that either. I don’t know the right answer. I just think that this will be very, very labor intensive for the whole city not just us during traffic control but blocking our streets for a long time and you are cutting out so many different people that participate in the parade, the walkers, the horses, the large trucks, all that kind of stuff so there’s a balancing act here but it will be very labor intensive for us and we will not be able to police the people gathering,” said Nichols.
The council debated the longer revised route, and eventually decided that keeping it on the traditional Austin Street route was the best option. Mayor Don Keil says moving the parade route or even just extending the viewing areas over to College Street, would be too difficult a situation to manage.
“I think it will create confusion and I think that it would be difficult to do from a logistical standpoint. I don’t know. I think Kyle has got the drill down as far as staging, what goes where and how everything works. It’s a nice compact route that I think it’s probably just better to stick with the old one. That’s my opinion,” said Keil.
Council members ultimately decided that the city would proceed with the parade as originally planned, but they will again revisit the issue in a couple of weeks. That decision was made on a consensus basis, and a more formal decision is expected to come in a couple of weeks.
As Mayor Keil mentioned earlier in the meeting, much of this may all be decided by the governor. If the governor still has crowd limits in place at that time, it could render decisions about Freedom Fiesta, the fireworks show and the parade all moot.
“The governor and the state of Texas is pretty much calling all the shots on the rules and regulations that we have here. Any kind of ordinances or orders that we had put in place initially are in between have pretty much been superseded by the state so all we have in effect right now is our emergency or declaration with no real orders in place other than to try and force what the state has suggested that we enforce and most of those orders that the state has in place do not offer penalties such as mask wearing and things like that. That’s just something that they have refused to people in jail for — for those sorts of things or fine them any real amounts of money,” said Keil.
If the schedule holds up, Freedom Fiesta would officially kick off the Fourth of July weekend in Seguin with a free community celebration in Central Park. KWED has been sponsoring the event for the last several years, but Freedom Fiesta was first held in 1967 and for decades was hosted by the Seguin Area Chamber of Commerce.