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Jackson County's Fourth of July celebration at Longview Lake permanently over

Fourth of July celebration at Longview Lake over
Posted at 5:03 PM, Jun 22, 2017
and last updated 2017-06-22 18:47:47-04

This year the option of celebrating America’s 241st birthday at Longview Lake is out. 

“I’m really surprised because it’s a big thing—everybody comes out to it,” Tom Clubbs, who fishes at the lake, said. 

Jackson County’s Parks and Recreation Department pulled the plug on the event because of a tight budget.

“We had a number of infrastructure needs in the parks department this year,” Michele Newman, director of Jackson County’s Parks and Rec., said in an interview with 41 Action News Thursday.

The decision came down when the county passed the budget in January.

“We started notifying the vendors letting them know that we would not be hosting the event as well as the fireworks company,” Newman said.

They also kept it out this year’s event calendar and published a note about it online around March, according to Newman.

The department chose to announce it on Wednesday.

“It’s really bad timing two weeks before people have things planned. Now they got to start all over again,” Clubbs said. 

Newman added they did look into sponsorships and even charging an admissions fee as a way to raise money for the Fourth of July, but it simply didn’t work out.

“I know they’re disappointed. We’re disappointed that we weren’t able to host it this year,” Newman said.

The event that began in 2012 under then Jackson County executive Mike Sanders won’t be coming back. 

“We’re planning a new event called ‘Lakeside Summer Jam,’ and it will be in June as to not to compete with the other Fourth of July events and so if budget allows and presenting that to the citizens of Jackson County in 2018,” Newman said. 

You can find a list of other area fireworks displays here.