By
: Mike Grebosz, Assistant City Manager for DeLand, FL
In 2020, many activities of daily life were disrupted due to the pandemic. In many jurisdictions, special events were cancelled, postponed or flat out banned from taking place. While flipping the off switch for special events might have been fairly easy to implement, the challenge that many jurisdictions have faced and will be facing in the near future is how and when to flip the switch back on.
In the City of DeLand, where the award winning historic downtown district would typically host over 60 plus events annually, the event freeze was a major shock to the system. Many people in the community wanted the events to return as soon as possible, but there was also, a large number of people in the community that wanted to make sure events were not going to become super-spreader incidents.
Taking these opinions into consideration along with monitoring the data provided by the health department the DeLand City Commission authorized staff in October of 2020 to allow for the return of special events, so long as the event organizer would submit and adhere to implementing a COVID-19 event safety plan along with the special event application required to receive a permit.
For the COVID-19 event safety plan, staff compiled a list of applicable event safety standards from the State Health Department and the Center for Disease Control and created a guideline document for event organizers to assist them in creating a COVID-19 safety plan for their particular event. The City recognized that each event varies in size, location and attendance and that each safety plan will be unique but the overall goal was to ensure that the event was being planned in a safe manner. If an event organizer did not fully comply with the safety plan submitted it may result in the event being immediately cancelled/stopped and there was a possibility of the event being denied a special event permit for the future.
After turning the switch back on for events, with the additional safety measure requirements, many event organizers chose to continue to hold off on hosting events. This was mainly due to the restrictions outlined in the safety plan guidelines along with the uncertainty with event attendance and the availability of vendors willing to participate. In looking at the data, the City only had seven event applications submitted when normally we have around twenty. Additionally, out of the seven applications that were submitted only about 50% of those events actually took place.
After implementation, as the State and Federal health recommendations loosened over the next several months, the City acknowledged the safety guideline changes and reflected such change in the requirements being sought for the event safety plan. At the moment, the City only requests event organizers consider implementing a COVID-19 safety plan but does not require it, with the caveat that if the pandemic environment takes a turn for the worst, organizers would again be required to submit and follow a COVID-19 safety plan.
To wrap up, the response from the public, event organizers and businesses community has been positive and this experience goes to show how communication and coordination can go a long way in getting a potentially polarizing initiative implemented with minimal opposition.
If your organization would like a copy of the DeLand’s COVID-19 Event Safety Guidelines please feel free to reach out to me at greboszm@deland.org.
