Reunite The festivals in Lincoln Illinois

Hated this year. Not as many vendors like there use to be uptown. Food vendors not allowed to sell soft drinks or water?! Thats just plain stupid! Needs to go back to the way it was ! Not everyone wants to ride rides some people just come for flee market vendors.

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Hated it this year, please change back!

Would love to see this go back to the way it was. Did not like the split at all.

Considering that every year it's either to windy or it rains having the other events going on gives u options of things to do.

did not like it at all this year. So much better the way it's always been.

I have gone to the Art and Balloon Festival for years and have never been so disappointed. Instead one of large nice festival worthy for people to travel to, we had two small inadequate ones that will definitely cause people not to return. I can't count the number of people who have expressed their disappointment from neighboring cities and towns. And charging 5 dollars a person to come to the festival which is bad enough but then not refunding the money when the event is cancelled. That is criminal.

Reunite them because people come from all over and it helps all the little businesses specificially for both art and balloons and it's will also help the businesses downtown to have a busy weekend

I think splitting the events was a bad choice. I was appalled to learn our local non-for-profit Woman's Club was not "allowed" to have their fundraising lunch during the Art Fair because it would take away business from the food vendors that were brought in. Pretty sad that a local club was denied their largest fundraiser. I've yet to talk to a single person that feels the split benefited Lincoln. I hope Lincoln can survive this mistake.

Or at least only separate it into only 2 weekends. Going straight to 4 different weekends was going overboard I think.

This is a ridiculous statement, sounds to me like the alderman is handing out blame to the community. Let's answer the question of how does one go about volunteering? Where is the advertising looking for volunteers? My personal favorite is how information for volunteers wasn't received until less than a week prior to the event. Who was in charge of getting volunteers that couldn't do their job to such an extent that the city split the festivals and risked failure of our biggest tourist event!!

Not ballsy enough to post without being anonymous? I have volunteered a couple years, but not this year because I didn't want to be a part of the trainwreck.

For those who want to know how the elected officials feel, Alderman Todd Mourning has an interesting response on his official alderman page. Here's a comment he made on his page in response to a poster, "I would be curious to know how many of the 307 people who signed the attached petition have volunteered for the art/balloon fest in the past?"

I know a lot of people didn't come for the Balloon Fest from out of town because that is all that was offered. They will come for more events! Please go back to the way it was!

Please put it all back together. City of Lincoln lost alot of money this weekend. People didn't like it at all.

Splitting the events has obviously cost Lincoln money

Hold these activities for the people, if you take care of the people, the people will take care of you. It would be interesting to know the figures of the tax revenue of prior years compared to this year? Id bet there is a big drop this year?

The festival was not the same. My husband and i were both disapointed.

I had to visit a local bank yesterday and raised the question about what has happened with the events. Not one person was in favor of splitting them up.

I've been very disappointed in the way the festivals have worked this year. None of them got a very good turnout, and the artists and flea market people weren't here, either. I don't know if attendance would improve next year if people accustom themselves, or if it would all just fall apart.