Dear Cypress Community,
We would first like to acknowledge our mistake in selecting October 12th as the date of this year’s 43rd Annual Cypress Community Festival. When the Festival Committee, in partnership with the City of Cypress Recreation Department, selected and approved this date, we consulted our local school calendars and our city’s events calendar. Unfortunately, neither of these calendars list this holiday.
This is no excuse, and we acknowledge and apologize for this oversight on our part. Our board has implemented new procedures for date selection, moving forward to ensure that this does not happen in the future. We sympathize with the Jewish community and extend our apologies for this oversight.
With regard to the presence of political booths, the Festival Board of Directors has discussed the recent discourse happening online and in the city council chambers. Our board held a vote to decide what action to take. At this time, our board has decided that removing all candidate political booths from the 2024 festival is the best course of action. Making the difficult, but right, decision to remove these booths from our festival just weeks before the event will result in a budget deficit of $4,000 for our non-profit. Refunds for those candidates and organizations who had already signed up and paid their booth fees will be sent out within the next two weeks.
It is important to note that city staff attends our board meetings and was well aware of the date chosen and the presence of political booths many months before concerns were brought up. We are disappointed and disheartened that our communication and partnership with the city, specifically the mayor, city council and senior leadership, seems to have eroded over the past several weeks.
Many assumptions, accusations, and statements were made about our organization and our board that were untrue and/or unnecessary. Our board will address these concerns with the council and city staff privately as we don’t believe it benefits anyone to contribute to the divisive and aggressive conversations happening publicly online.
Lastly, we’d like the community to be aware that the Cypress Community Festival Association is a non-profit 501c4 organization made up of residents and business owners who volunteer their time for this event. None of these volunteers are paid, and many take on this position in addition to full time jobs, kids, families and very busy lives. The majority of our funding each year comes from booth fees, sponsorships, and sales of items at the event (chili ballots, alcohol, kids rides, etc.). Please reach out to us if you’re interested in joining our board and helping us secure more support and funding or helping us plan this event in years to come!
In closing, the Cypress Community Festival is a place for our community to come together and celebrate the birthday of the City of Cypress. We love and appreciate this beautiful and diverse community that we call home. The Festival Committee has been working very hard all year to plan this event and we hope to see you there! This year we have a great entertainment lineup, featuring Knyght Rider as our headlining band! We have a large selection of craft booths, a robust chili & salsa competition, a redesigned (and better priced) kids area, booths showcasing our local businesses, a classic car show, and our very own Cypress PD K-9 Bono demo team. The Festival will be open this year from 10am – 8pm with free shuttle service from Cypress High School.
On behalf of our board, thank you for your continued support.
Jimmy Fuller & Brittney Cook
President & Vice President
Editor’s Note: This statement was published unedited as received.