The "Other" Event City

It turns out the city of Oshkosh is not the only one in Wisconsin dealing with being the "Too Many Events City".  An article in yesterday's edition of the Capital Times details how the city of Madison is being overwhelmed with demand for services, street closures and park takeovers on a scale even worse than what Oshkosh is dealing with.

The paper cites an astounding 384 events that will force the closure of streets or restrict access to public parks in 2018 alone.  Add to that Madison's penchant for protests, rallies and marches--which the city does not require permits for in order to adhere to the First Amendment--and you almost daily occurrences of needing to block off streets, provide police security and re-route public transportation.

Madison has so many event requests they have had to form a special committee just to review special event permits.  And city staff are assigned to coordinating all of that activity--much like the hiring of the Special Events Coordinator here in Oshkosh--funded by the permit fees that the city looks to raise every year. 

Part of the problem in Madison is that each neighborhood thinks it has to have its own "Festival"--each with street concerts and food vendors and pretentious wine tents.  And since we need to create as many divisions between ourselves as possible nowadays, there are a lot of "neighborhoods" that those living there probably didn't even know existed.

Festival fatigue in Madison is also taking on a "socio-economic" angle.  The city's Racial Justice committee is among those fed up all the events because bus routes are detoured on a weekly basis for much of the year.  Precious on-street parking for locals is taken up by festival attendees.  And free public parks are taken over on multiple weekends, limiting access.  It's ironic that in "celebrating diversity", the upscale white folks from the suburbs do nothing more than inconvenience the minorities they are trying to "celebrate".

Just like in Oshkosh, the real cost of "event mania" is on city services--as overtime in the Madison Police Department has increased by 50% in just the past two years.  The Police Chief is calling for a sharp reduction in the number of festivals and special events--or at least a moratorium on new permits.  But as more letters are added to the LGBTQ alphabet--and more "social injustices" demand protest and "awareness rallies"--the likelihood of that happening is remote.

Maybe we should get back to the days where we'd have a few friends over for a backyard barbecue on a Saturday afternoon--instead of thinking we need to invite 5,000 people over to enjoy bad reggae cover bands and questionable food truck edibles.