This year’s Arnold Days celebration has been canceled because of the COVID-19 pandemic, Arnold city officials announced today (July 8).
The annual festival was scheduled for Sept. 18-20 at Arnold City Park, and it will not be rescheduled, according to the announcement.
Arnold Mayor Ron Counts said in a written statement he was disappointed Arnold Days needed to be canceled.
“I believe it was the only choice, if the city wants to protect the health and safety of the public,” he said.
City Administrator Bryan Richison said he, too, is disappointed to see the event canceled, but believes it was the right decision.
“It would have been nice to have it. It is always a good event,” he said. “Given the increases in cases that we are seeing, it doesn’t seem like a good idea to have that many people together in one place.”
Jefferson County had 72 positive COVID -19 cases in May and 176 cases in June, an increase of 144 percent, and cases are still on the rise, the Jefferson County Health Department has reported.
“The event is not until September, so who knows what it will be like at that time, but we have to make decisions now on the event based on the best data we have,” Richison said. “With the increases, it doesn’t seem like a smart idea “
Richison said Arnold Days typically attracts between 3,000 and 4,000 people to the park over the three-day festival. He said when the weather is good, crowds can be as large as 1,000 people in the park at one time.
“If we are going to pick between playing it safe and canceling it to protect people for the virus, or taking a risk and having it and potentially have a lot of people get the virus because it spreads there, we are going to play it safe. It is that simple,” Richison said. “The last thing you want is to take the risk and your event becomes the source of spreading the virus. Nobody wants that.”
Richison said it’s more difficult to try to keep people safe at a big event like Arnold Days than at the city's Recreation Center, outdoor pool or other facilities that recently reopened.
“When you come to the rec center, there are opportunities for people to social distance,” Richison said. “The pool is a little tougher to social distance, but you are still talking at most maybe 100 people there. With Arnold Days, you could potentially have 1,000 people in the park at one time. That doesn’t seem like a good idea.”
Arnold reopened the rec center, 1695 Missouri State Road, on Monday (July 6), and the city’s outdoor pool initially reopened with restrictions on June 8 and then began operating without restrictions on June 20. The city also started operating its Farmers Market on May 9 with restrictions, but removed those restrictions June 20.
Richison said the decision to cancel Arnold Days was based purely on health-related concerns, not financial ones.
He said the city already paid Gateway Fireworks of St. Louis $50,000 for two shows during Arnold Days. The city also paid the company $25,000 for a Fourth of July show, which also was canceled this year because of concerns about COVID-19.
Richison said the company has credited Arnold in the past for shows that had to be canceled for weather-related reasons, and he believes the city’s payments for this year’s shows will be used for future displays.
“The hope is we can have those shows next year,” he said. “If that is unable to happen, I’m not really sure how that will play out. We will wait and see.”
Gateway Fireworks has provided displays for Arnold since 2005, when the St. Louis-based company was first hired to handle the city’s Fourth of July show. Gateway Fireworks started putting on shows for Arnold Days in 2007.
Richison said Arnold Days typically costs the city money, even though it brings in between $20,000 and $25,000 from its share of profits from carnival ride ticket sales.
However, the cost to put on the three-day event exceeds the profits the city sees, despite any increase in sales tax from festival-goers patronizing Arnold businesses while they’re in town.
“(Expenses) could climb to between $75,000 and $100,000 when you count staff time, extra police officers on duty during the festival, utility costs, renting porta-potties and paying for musical acts,” Richison said. “I don’t think it gets to $100,000, but it possibly gets closer to that than I think.”
While the city may lose some sales tax revenue by canceling Arnold Days, it recently received some good news regarding sales tax, he said.
After the city saw a 3.74 percent drop in sales tax collected in April compared to the same month last year, it saw a 1.82 percent increase in May compared to the previous May.
In addition, from September 2019 to May, the city’s income from sales tax had increased 3.74 percent compared to the same nine-month period during the past fiscal year. Arnold’s fiscal year runs from Sept. 1 to Aug. 31.
“A lot of that is we were doing well leading into April (when many businesses were shut down or limited services because of COVID-19),” Richison said. “It looks like it bounced back in May.”
Richison said he didn’t know if the city had canceled Arnold Days in the past.
