ALTAMONTE SPRINGS, Fla. \u2014 Members of the Altamonte Springs City Commissioners are expected to hear from residents Thursday night as they consider a proposed budget that does not include funding for the city’s longtime Fourth of July celebration, Red Hot & Boom.<\/p>\n
The nearly 30-year-old celebration is held at Cranes Roost Park, and city officials estimate the cost of the five-hour event to be nearly $950,000.<\/p>\n
Commissioner Jim Turney said he would like to see the event continue, but also recognized the financial and safety concerns surrounding it. <\/p>\n
\u201cI love Red Hot & Boom in Altamonte \u2026 and I would really like to see it continue, but on the other hand, I know that there are some other concerns, such as the cost, but also a growing risk as we\u2019re adding people living right close to the Crane\u2019s Roost Park,\u201d Turney said.<\/p>\n
Turney said the price of hosting the celebration has increased significantly during his time on the commission. <\/p>\n
\u201cThe price of putting \u2014 the cost, I should say, of putting it on, has more than doubled in those years, even just in the last 10 years that I\u2019ve been on the commission,” he said. “I think that the attendance has more or less stabilized during the last nine or 10 years. It’s been stable while the cost has gone up.”<\/p>\n
Turney said commissioners have not held their own public discussion about the trade-offs involved in keeping Red Hot & Boom. He wants residents to have a clearer opportunity to say how they want their tax money spent.<\/p>\n
He also floated the possibility of a referendum asking taxpayers whether they would support paying a special fee to fund the event.<\/p>\n
Nearby businesses are also weighing the financial benefits against the challenges created by the celebration.<\/p>\n
Trent Warner, general manager of Caf\u00e9 Murano, said the restaurant once benefited financially from Red Hot & Boom, but that has changed. <\/p>\n
\u201cIt used to be lucrative, and it\u2019s gotten to the point now where it\u2019s not,” Warner said. “For instance, this past Saturday had more sales than it was this past Red Hot & Boom.”<\/p>\n
Warner said street closures around the restaurant hurt sales in the days leading up to the event. Caf\u00e9 Murano also charges a cover and charges for patio seating to control the crowd.<\/p>\n
Warner said he supports canceling the event in its current form, but would be open to the city trying a smaller or redesigned celebration.<\/p>\n
Residents can speak before commissioners consider the proposed budget on first reading during Thursday’s City Commission meeting, which starts at 7 p.m. A second reading is scheduled for Sept. 16. If the budget passes both readings, it will go into effect on Oct. 1.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ALTAMONTE SPRINGS, Fla. \u2014 Members of the Altamonte Springs City Commissioners are expected to hear from residents Thursday…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":389292,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[767,274,3949,28,2287,115,139,141,140,99,1014,278],"class_list":["post-389291","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-orlando","tag-app-community","tag-app-top-stories","tag-bryanna-howard","tag-florida","tag-local-politics","tag-news","tag-orlando","tag-orlando-headlines","tag-orlando-news","tag-politics","tag-seminole-county","tag-top-stories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/389291","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=389291"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/389291\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/389292"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=389291"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=389291"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=389291"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}