Councillors for the Vacation resort Municipality of Stanley Bridge, Hope River, Bayview, Cavendish and North Rustico have voted to deny an software for a second summertime audio festival in Cavendish.
Council voted 3-2 against the application Monday night.
Whitecap Leisure wanted to start the Sommo Competition, a two-working day rock concert and culinary competition on July 14-15 — the weekend following the 2023 Cavendish Beach Tunes Pageant (CBMF).
“Councillors would tell you it was an exceptionally hard selection to make,” explained Linda Lowther, deputy mayor for the municipality.
The municipality acquired two petitions — a person for and a single from the concert. There were being about 600 signatures in favour of the live performance, and about 300 from, Lowther stated.
“1 of the things you will need to think about is exactly where all those signatures were being coming from. I feel council weighed closely on the viewpoints of their constituents who voted them in just a few months in the past.”
At the community meeting about the concert on Feb. 6, some business enterprise owners questioned whether or not another concert would be valuable, Lowther said, with some drawing comparisons to the Cavendish Seaside Audio Festival.
“Other business enterprise who don’t generally get any business from CBMF visitors to the location for the reason that they never try to eat in the restaurants, and they never golfing and they do not go to the points of interest, they basically go to CBMF, the issue [is] that this would be the very same point,” reported Lowther.
“They would yet again shed some of their earnings in excess of the program of people two times,” Lowther said.
‘A family market’
Council also obtained written letters, and Lowther stated several of them targeted on the dates for the proposed festival, July 14-15.
“I consider most people assumed it was a good event. It is really just, it truly is in the peak time when we have a family marketplace,” stated Lowther.
“Most of the persons that arrive here continue to be for a week, the family members, they’ve been coming for several years. It can be the family vacation spot, right? So experienced it been a different day I stated I do not even think people would have blinked.”
Ben Murphy, CEO of Whitecap Entertainment was at the assembly and asked for clarity on the vote.
Even though there was confusion in the area at the time of the vote, Lowther clarified a number of times and spoke with councillors later on to make sure they understood what they ended up voting on, she reported.
“Men and women ended up certain what they ended up voting for, so I never imagine there is going to be an problem,” Lowther explained.
Murphy declined to remark on the predicament.
Councillors George Clark Dunning and Chris Robinson voted in favour of holding the audio pageant. Councillors Ryan Simpson, Kay Hryckiw and Lee Brammer voted to deny the software.
The mayor of the municipality, Matthew Jelley, was not at the council assembly, and Lowther did not vote.