{"id":683185,"date":"2026-05-21T01:54:10","date_gmt":"2026-05-21T01:54:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/683185\/"},"modified":"2026-05-21T01:54:10","modified_gmt":"2026-05-21T01:54:10","slug":"italian-day-gets-funding-from-vancouver-city-council","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/683185\/","title":{"rendered":"Italian Day gets funding from Vancouver City Council"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>At Wednesday\u2019s City Council meeting on City Finance and Services, a motion for a one-time grant to fund Italian Day on Commercial Drive this summer was passed unanimously.<\/p>\n<p>The Italian Day Festival Society was seeking $60,000 as a city-wide agreement with FIFA stripped the festival of vital sponsorship revenue by taking over local street banner advertising spaces on Commercial Drive.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe were very pleased to see unanimous support from council for this emergency one-time funding for Italian Day,\u201d said Melissa De Genova, the President of the Italian Day Festival.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI think the message came through loud and clear that there needs to be a conversation with the City of Vancouver and many festivals including Italian Day about how we continue to sustain the rising costs considering the city grants for the festival.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>With the grant, Italian Day no longer has to scale back its festivities.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cObviously there are certain things that we can\u2019t compromise on. For instance, public safety. That\u2019s not something we would even consider. When it comes to our cultural activities, that\u2019s where we would have had to have scaled back and made some really hard decisions.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>But the grant from Vancouver City Council has helped relieve the pressure the festival was facing, though there are still some concerns.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe rising costs that are unique to Italian Day activating at the same time as FIFA, for example, where usually we\u2019d have access to more traffic authority personnel, we may not have those same\u2026 We\u2019re looking at different public safety measures at a higher cost to us.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Italian Day sees over 300,000 people along Commercial Drive every June.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe\u2019re hoping that that everyone comes out to join us for Italian Day on the drive on Sunday, June 14.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>With files from Raynaldo Suarez<\/p>\n<p>\t\tKeep it Factual<\/p>\n<p>Add CityNews Vancouver as a trusted source on Google to see more local stories from us.<\/p>\n<p>\t\t<a href=\"https:\/\/www.google.com\/preferences\/source?q=vancouver.citynews.ca\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\"><br \/>\n\t\t<img decoding=\"async\" class=\"add-trusted-source-badge\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/1778189171_473_google-trusted-badge.png\" alt=\"Add as a preferred source on Google\"\/><br \/>\n\t\t<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"At Wednesday\u2019s City Council meeting on City Finance and Services, a motion for a one-time grant to fund&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":676517,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[194298],"tags":[49,48,55],"class_list":["post-683185","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-vancouver","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-vancouver"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/683185","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=683185"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/683185\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/676517"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=683185"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=683185"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=683185"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}