Deciding Moments for Celebrate America

A group of civic minded citizens has teamed together to form a committee to design, develop and implement a new major community festival in SeaTac to be held each year on the Fourth of July. The committee has adopted “Celebrate America” for the festival name.

Event Overview

Events may begin as early as 7 am and operate until 12 pm – Locations and descriptions are as follows:

• North SeaTac Park: 
• Classic Car Show
• Disc Golf Tournament
• BMX Bicycle Race Clinic
• SeaTac Community Center:
• Garden Tour
• PacWest Field Complex:
• Boys Baseball
• Girls Softball
• Valley Ridge Park:
• Jam-n-Jet Skate Off
• 6 a Side Soccer Tournament
• Angle Lake Area:
• Kiddies Patriotic Parade
• 5k Family Walk 
• Run Around the Boomerang

All converge on Angle Lake Park from 1:00 pm until 10:30 pm

• Angle Lake Park:
• Flag Ceremony and  Wounded Warrior Dedication
• Recognition of our Naturalized New American Citizens 
• Participant Arts & Crafts; Blow Up Toys, Face Painting, Old Fashioned Picnic Games 
• Live Music with Celebrity MC 
• Historic Period Actors Performances
• Scout Barbeque Foods and Classic Desserts
• City of SeaTac and Angle Lake Shore Club present the 4th of July Fireworks Show Over Angle Lake.

The individuals on this committee have invested hundreds of hours working on this agenda since July of 2011, developing the concept, gathering key event stakeholders, working with city staff and elected officials, including outreach to the Somali and Punjabi communities and several local businesses such as Mike’s Community Coffee for their engagement and support for this event  The committee has also been invited this past two weeks to meet with the newly formed ad-hoc ‘Festival Committee’ for further review of our proposed event.

Since beginning in December 2011, the Celebrate America (CA) team has also been actively evolving a request for funding through the Hotel / Motel (H/M) Advisory Committee.  All required forms were originally submitted in December for review at the scheduled January H/M Committee meeting.  A request for more detail was made of the CA Committee so that a supplemental 99 page packet was submitted for review at the February meeting.  Unfortunately the volume of detail was determined to be too great to make a decision at the February meeting and it was decided by the H/M Advisory Committee Members that a vote should be deferred to a later time in order to allow additional time for review. 

In addition to the H/M Advisory dealings, the CA members have been working with City Officials and are on the agenda to present an event concept overview and to make a funding request at the next Council Study Session scheduled for Tuesday, March 13th at 4PM. The objective is to determine if this event is something the City is willing to support through public funding and decide if it warrants further discussion. If decision is made to support Celebrate America, the next steps anticipated may be:

• March 14th 3-5PM - H/M Advisory Committee will discuss and is expected to reach a consensus determination regarding direction for funding request.
• March 27th 3-5PM – H/M Advisory Committee recommendation may be delivered to the council Study Session.  At which time the Council may determine that enough information is available to warrant a vote at the evening Regular Council Meeting. 
• March 27th 6-8PM – The Council Members would be expected to discuss and vote on support for the event, if majority support is achieved, indication of a specific amount of funding is expected.  If additional discussion is required to also take the H/M Advisory Committee recommendation into overall consideration, a final determination on funding may be delayed until the next following Regular Council Meeting scheduled for April 10th.

Please note the dates included above are derived from logical conclusions made by the author and therefore are subject to change. Actual dates and times will be determined by city officials. 

If a favorable decision is reached to support Celebrate America, we’re not quite in the clear yet. Depending on when approval is made and a specific funding amount is indicated, the CA Committee and the event stakeholders will need to meet for a Go / No Go decision to confirm that approved funding is adequate and there is still sufficient lead time available to produce and deliver a quality event for this year. This decision would be expected to be achieved within days after the council decision is made public.