Though those that are behind the annual Wellington City Pioneer Days Celebration worked hard to avoid a cancellation in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, it was announced during the Wednesday evening city council meeting that this year’s celebration has been cancelled.
Rory Bradley, celebration spearhead and Wellington City Police Chief, stated that it was a really hard decision to make but agreed that the city does not have the resources to be compliant with the current restrictions. He continued by stating that he cannot guarantee that the state will be in the “green phase” of the pandemic at that point.
Bradley also remarked that, with the new cases and deaths that have been recently reported, he was worried that the state could possibly even revert back to the orange phase. While it was acknowledged that the state of things in the next two months is unknown at this time, the decision to cancel had to be made now as the process of planning the celebration would have usually began long before now.
It was also stated that the Pioneer Days Celebration has not been cancelled since the 1940s. Bradley voiced his concern that, as all other events in the area have already been cancelled, there may be an influx of people at the celebration and if one or two of those attendees had the coronavirus, it would quickly spread to others.
The council agreed that it is upsetting but they do not wish to be the ones that rushed into gathering many together and endangering lives. The cancellation was then approved by the council.