One of the final International Days meeting before the festivities begin was hosted on Tuesday afternoon. Starting off with the grand marshal for the parade, Megan Marshall announced that they received several nominations, probably more than in the last four parades.
She previously informed the committee on who was nominated for the grand marshal and the citizen of the year honors and asked all that were in attendance to cast their vote during the meeting. While the votes were cast and tallied, the names will be announced at a later date. Marshall stated that opening nominations to the public is garnering more and more participation and she is happy to see so many diverse nominations.
The next item of discussion was the movies that are hosted at Pioneer Park. “Raya and the Last Dragon” will be shown on Friday night while “Godzilla vs. Kong” was chosen for the Saturday showing. Currently, there are eight food vendors and over 20 miscellaneous vendors for the festivities.
It was stated that things will look a bit different this year as the booths are more distanced. The committee is hoping to get a rush between now and the celebrations, stating that they do have people that come on opening night to set up and make their payment at that time.
Those that wish to participate in the kid’s parade can show up the day-of to be a part of it. Kid’s Day is ready to go with snow cones, bounce houses and more. There is still plenty of room for teams to sign up for the cornhole tournament and Castleview Hospital is sponsoring the prizes. There is room for 32 teams.
Get Your Smoke On is going to be the food vendor for the annual burnout contest. Instead of trophies, this year they decided to give zip-up hoodies as the prize. The organizers made this change as they wished to do something different and unique.
Conversation then shifted to the subject of possibly moving International Days, in the future, to the first or second weekend in August. This year’s event will take place the same as usual, July 29-31. If this decision was made, it would only affect the dates going forward.
The main reason for the possible change is that the committee cannot secure the carnival they prefer due to it being committed to an event in Idaho on the same weekend. They are available in August and have said that if the committee can agree to move International Days, they can sign a contract and work out a deal.
Discussion was had on other events that may be hosted at the same time in August and not wishing to have conflicts. It was suggested to send out an email and gather everyone’s input on the date change.
Focus then turned to the parade once again and Marshall stated that she has had a lot more people register early for the parade than in the past. There are 25 entries so far and, at this time, there are usually around a dozen entries. She spoke on the new categories and said the feedback has mostly been positive.
There will be one more meeting before International Days 2021 begins, which will take place on July 27 promptly at noon.