By Jessica Mathews / news@whmi.com


City officials are expressing optimism ahead of this weekend’s scaled-back Howell Melon Festival.

Monday night’s Howell City Council meeting was much quieter than those of late amid controversy surrounding the festival and a Drag Queen Bingo event, although several residents still weighed in.

The festival is organized by the Howell Area Parks & Recreation Authority (HAPRA), which announced last week that it would be canceling the popular beer tent after being given an ultimatum by the City to shut down the tent at 4pm Saturday or it would revoke the civic event application – thus canceling the festival. Because HAPRA relies on strong Saturday sales to offset event expenses, they said the only feasible way to proceed was to cancel the beer tent and scale back the festival. A sold-out Drag Queen Bingo event, which has been at the center of the dispute, is going on as scheduled Saturday night, although it was moved from the beer tent to the privately-owned Historic Howell Theater venue.

Three residents offered their festival-related opinions during Call to the Public - one in support of what’s transpired and two others who felt the beer tent should not have been canceled and cited the harm to local businesses.

One resident named Stephanie told Council there are a lot of people thoroughly disappointed with what’s going on and the resulting harm to downtown businesses for “letting a few narrow-minded individuals decide an event that’s been going on for 60 years” – adding the City should have law enforcement deal with troublemakers and let life go on as normal.

That was echoed by her fiancé Jeff Booth, who commented the bingo events are fun and he’s never heard about any problems in Royal Oak where the shows take place regularly. He told Council “you can’t run life of what might happen”, saying law enforcement is there to protect if needed and that’s their job. Booth added “it’s not our job trying to kill everybody whose trying to make a living after COVID and that seems like what you’re trying to do. These people have had a hard year and now they’re trying to make money back and your shutting their beer tent down or stopping it”.

On the opposite side of the issue was longtime resident Jack Pierce, who said he’s all for what transpired at the end with Melonfest and beer tent. Pierce cited poor scheduling, saying the festival has been going on a long time and when it was decided to do something big on the same weekend, “someone wasn’t thinking along the way and maybe that would have solved a big headache for everyone” if it had been checked into prior.

Mayor Nick Proctor clarified that while there are no actual threats against Melonfest, city officias felt they has to act as emotions are high on both sides and when you throw alcohol and big crowds into the mix, then the possibility of something going wrong is very high.

Proctor stressed that law enforcement will be taking everything very seriously to make sure that everyone in town has a good time this weekend. He commented that there will still be a lot of good activities at Melonfest and they’re expecting a lot of people in town. Proctor said they’re not worried about the Drag Queen bingo event and hope everything goes really well and everyone has a good time – adding he thinks everything will remain in order.