Ettrick village board concerned over bar event
After several bars in Ettrick announced a coordinated event this weekend, board president John Beirne and trustee Marc Baures called a meeting last Thursday to express their concern to the event’s organizers: bar owner Seth Dale and fellow village board trustee and bar owner Josh Hanson.
According to the Facebook page, the event is named “Weiner Daddy’s Corner Fest” and will include a pub crawl, golf tournament, corn hole tournament, gun raffle and live entertainment. There will also be a food truck on Saturday and Ettrick Lion’s Club will be serving chicken.
The foremost concern for the some members of the village board was COVID-19.
“The primary concern is around the size and duration in relation to the... festival. We have sufficient concern about COVID exposure,” said Marc Baures.
Weiner’s Bar owner Seth Dale defended the event saying, “I have been operating at 60 percent. There is no guarantee that we will get a lot of people for this.”
Village trustee Harold Olson responded saying the main concern is the number of people who will show up.
“You guys are going to draw a large group of people, you know that,” Olson said. “None of us want you to go under, but drawing the big crowd in regards to COVID is the concern.”
Baures suggested the crowd might be similar to what the village gets for Ettrick’s Fun Days.
“What happens if you have an Ettrick days turnout? There is enough conversation on Facebook to suggest that it is a possibility that it would be like Ettrick days,” Baures said. “There could be a hot spot and a break out… or there could be nothing. What we are discussing is the density of people coming in here...without any other festivals going on.”
Hanson and Dale said that the weather would hopefully encourage people to stay outside and spread out, saying that they both had outdoor seating.
“We are pretty much doing everything we would normally do, but we are doing it together,” Hanson said.
Concerned members of the board acknowledged that there wasn’t much the board could do to prohibit the event.
“I wanted to hear a plan to mitigate it. The village cannot support a large event here,” Baures said.