It was announced on Wednesday that the Price City International Days celebration would be canceled this year. Castle Country Radio took some time to visit with Council Member Amy Knott-Jespersen over the telephone about the city’s decision.

“We didn’t want to make a decision too soon before we had all the information and with everybody knows this COVID-19 pandemic just everything changes on a daily basis and so we didn’t want to shoot too soon and then having to end up having the opportunity to put something on. So we’ve just been holding off till the last possible minute when we had to make the decision,” said Knott-Jespersen. The choice was not made lightly and there were a lot of components that had to do with the decision but the city council felt that this was the best decision at this time.

“So the financial cutbacks that we have had in the city so with businesses shutting down and the college shutting down and so many of our main street businesses closing for a month and half, two months, our restaurants being affected, that has a direct impact on Price City’s revenue through sales tax,” stated Knott-Jespersen. The International Days celebration comes down the long list of priority spending at this time and it just was not feasible with all that has been going on with the COIVD-19 pandemic.

There is talk that maybe smaller segments of the city’s annual celebration could take place. “We’re still talking about maybe some options during the summer on a weekly basis or something like that. But that again comes down to volunteers are they willing to do that, to help plan something. We’ve also had to cut back on, we usually hire seasonal staff during the summer for our Parks Department and we haven’t been able to do that, so we’re basically on a skeletal crew,” said Knott Jespersen. Details to host smaller segments has not been established at this time but further information on that will come at a later date if the city chooses to proceed with a small portion of activities.

“Yea, I just want to add one more thing, next year we will come back bigger and better and ready to party, so expect that,” exclaimed Knott-Jespersen. To keep up to date on the happenings at Price City visit their Facebook page.