Culture Summerside to head up 2017 Lobster Festival

The 2017 Summerside Lobster Festival will be headed up by Culture Summerside,

The change was announced at Monday night's council meeting.

This comes after the November meeting where a lengthy discussion on the future of the festival took place, resulting in council making it clear that they would eventually like the community to take over the management of the annual festival.

• City of Summerside wants to give Lobster Festival back to the community

In the end council decided to go with Culture Summerside, which is a division of the city. The decision came out of wanting to see the festival continue tosucceed, said Coun. BrianMcFeely.

"I think there's general agreement in council that we'd like to see the festival continue. It's got a long history, a long tradition in Summerside, so this is an attempt to keep that going," said McFeely.

"It would have been a senior staff decision to assign it to a lead department and the decision was made that Culture Summerside may be best positioned to move it forward in the next year."

No plans yet

There is no word on staffing, or programming yet,

McFeely said all of that planning work will begin in the new year. He said Culture Summerside will still have a lot of support from the community services department.McFeely said he believes Culture Summerside, which is responsible for promoting the culture and history of the city, is a good fit.

"I have no issue with it;they have very capable staff.," he said

"In terms of the delivery it should be done in a professional and certainly a way that hopefully the citizens can be pleased with."

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