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Festival Notes Successes, Challenges

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By DAVE NICHOLSON, The Tampa Tribune

Published: February 20, 2008

PLANT CITY - Visitors to the Florida Strawberry Festival will notice some changes this year, from a large gate to get them into the grounds faster to a strictly enforced ban on eating and drinking in livestock tents.

In wide-ranging remarks Feb. 13 to Greater Plant City Chamber of Commerce members, festival officials touted its successes, its improvements and some of the challenges it has faced.

Here are some of the highlights:

•The festival will strictly enforce a ban on eating and drinking in livestock tents to ensure visitors and exhibitors don't risk exposure to E. coli bacteria, which is not uncommon in livestock.

Livestock exhibitors could be ejected if they ignore the ban, Festival General Manager Patsy Brooks said. The ban was in effect in 2007 but it was ignored by some people, Brooks said. In 2005, several festival visitors were sickened by E. coli 0157:H7 that health officials linked to a festival petting zoo.

The festival reached confidential settlements in three lawsuits filed by festival visitors who said they were made sick at the festival, but the fallout from the outbreak continues. There won't be a petting zoo this year, and the festival will place more warning signs of the health risks of being around livestock and the need for hand-washing when one has been in a livestock area.

"If we don't do this we won't have insurance. We won't have a festival," Brooks said.

•The festival will ban distribution of candy or beads at the Grand Feature Parade on March 3. The city prohibited distribution of goodies at parades following the death of a 9-year-old Inverness boy who was run over by a church float while he was helping distribute candy at the Dec. 7 Christmas parade in Plant City. The festival was planning to ban distribution of candy or beads at its parade before the boy was killed because of insurance concerns, festival President Gary Boothe said.

•The festival spent about $500,000 for expanded ticket sale windows and gates at Oak Avenue and Woodrow Wilson Street to get visitors into the festival grounds more quickly, festival director Mike Sparkman said. The festival also installed fiber optics and a wireless system to handle electronic ticketing.

•The festival has a waiting list of 100 to 200 clubs and vendors who want to have booths at the festival, Brooks said. The festival tries to accommodate as many groups as possible but has limited space, she said.

•Youngsters who entered agriculture shows received more than $630,000 last year from sales and auctions of their cattle, hogs, plants and assorted farm animals.

•The festival's budget includes $1.5 million for headline entertainment, $300,000 for advertising, $250,000 for security and $100,000 for free entertainment such as singers and racing pigs.

•In the next two years, the festival expects to spend $2.5 million to $3 million moving agriculture facilities to the west side of the festival grounds, Boothe said.

•The festival is self-supporting and does not receive tax money, Boothe said.

Brooks, Boothe and Sparkman were the featured speakers at the chamber's monthly membership breakfast.

The festival is Feb. 28 through March 9.

Reporter Dave Nicholson can be reached at (813) 865-4432 or dnicholson@tamptrib.com.

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