The Corn Festival has to go on.
Councilmembers said the festival, which has been part of La Habra since 1949, is too important to the community and recently agreed to help subsidize the annual event organized by the La Habra Host Lions Club.
The council recently agreed that the city would discount by 50% what it asks the Lions Club to pay for expenses related to the three-day festival that will be held this year over the third weekend of August at El Centro-Lions Park. That would include costs such as police services and other city employee time.
The city will also completely subsidize its costs in connection to the Saturday morning parade.
City leaders made clear this was not the city taking on the planning, just covering the costs for city-related services.
The city has helped over the years to defray some level of cost for the festival and parade, and in honor of the Lions’ 75th anniversary in 2024, offered a 75% subsidy, and in honor of the city’s centennial in 2025, gave $100,000 toward the event.
Lions Club leaders approached the city earlier this year about again getting help covering costs, saying the event would be at risk without the subsidies.
City leaders considered a variety of options, including taking over production of the festival, which could cost well over $200,000 a year, officials said.
“Over the years, especially the last five or six years, a number of signature parade events in other communities have struggled or actually been cancelled,” City Manager Jim Sadro said. “This is not unusual, what the Lions Club is facing.”
He said the staff’s estimate for the cost of the subsidies to the city will be about $100,000.
In recent years, the biggest cost has been renting the barriers to put up and down the street to protect people, he said. “With what you have seen happen at major events across this country, the amount of security and security systems that we are placing at major public events now has skyrocketed our costs.”
The Lions Club tried a larger festival footprint and even moved the event in recent years to see if that would boost attendance, but that didn’t happen, officials said.
“The biggest thing is we are going to go back to our park because that is what we are hearing the community requesting,” said Ofelia Hanson, club treasurer. “So we are going to try it, we’re going to see. But we are also asking our community to come out and support us.”
In a time when entertainment is changing and community events are dwindling, City Councilmember Delwin Lampkin said what he heard from residents is: “At the end of the day, this has to happen, we have to have a Corn Festival.”
Councilmembers also noted the event is used by the Lions Club as a fundraiser for its philanthropic work in the community and the proceeds raised are dispersed to a variety of youth and community groups.
“Everything they do comes back to the community,” Mayor Jose Medrano said. “I want to make sure that does not go away. This is part of the heart and soul of our community.”