The South Milwaukee Common Council voted 6-0 Tuesday night to cancel the city’s 2021 Independence Day festivities and fireworks. I support the decision.
Here is my statement …
No one wants to cancel this special community celebration, but it was the right decision.
We hold this event at Grant Park, and it requires a permit from Milwaukee County to do so. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the county has put a limit of 1,000 on crowd sizes for special events like this — a directive reinforced just hours before our meeting. Our celebration routinely draws thousands of people, and we did not see a way we could limit attendance to meet this threshold — nor did we want to. Enforcing the crowd size limit would also be next to impossible. We explored other locations in the city, but none were suitable to host our fireworks show.
We look forward to bringing back our Independence Day celebration in 2022, bigger and better than ever, as we continue to take necessary steps to address the pandemic and reopen safely and responsibly. We also look forward to enjoying a number of local events still planned for South Milwaukee this summer — from the South Milwaukee Downtown Market opening this week to the Heritage Days Parade to Community Night Out, and many, many more.
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