By Audrey Levine Staff Writer
The latest victim of the Borough Council’s budget cuts is the town’s annual Community Day.
According to Recreation Director Rich Armstrong, the Finance Committee eliminated the event from the Recreation Department’s budget in an effort to continue cutting costs before the borough finalized its $13,474,290 budget in August.
”This is a shame, but hopefully we can bring it back next year,” he said of the event, regularly held on the third Saturday in September.
Former Mayor Angelo Corradino started holding the event after the floods caused by Hurricane Floyd in 1999, Mr. Armstrong said. It was a way to celebrate the community having banded together to help those in need after the disaster.
”It was Angelo’s idea to give something back to the community,” he said.
Over the past nine years, the Lincoln Park event which Mr. Armstrong said usually costs the borough about $10,000 included food, children’s games, moonwalks and nighttime fireworks.
”The biggest draw was the fireworks, with about 500 people,” he said. “People would bring lawn chairs and set them up on the field.”
Aside from the games, Mr. Armstrong said, the Police Department performed child seat safety checks and the Rescue Squad put equipment on display.
With all that was offered, hundreds of people would turn out to celebrate the town, and Mr. Armstrong said he would usually run out of the 1,000 hamburgers and 800 hot dogs he would purchase for the event.
”It was usually a pretty big event,” he said with a laugh.
Although Mr. Armstrong said he only found out about the cancellation a couple weeks ago, he had not been able to finalize all the preparations because his work was put on hold while the borough’s Finance Committee sorted out the budget.
”In years past, I had everything set at the beginning of June,” he said. “But it was all put on hold while the Finance Committee finished the cuts. I kept hoping Community Day wouldn’t be cut.”
Mr. Armstrong said he is not giving up on the possibility of the celebration returning in 2009. He said he will try to get donations from local businesses for food, entertainment and other aspects of the celebration to offset the cost of the event next year.
”If I had known early enough about the cut (for this year’s event), I could have (tried to get donations) earlier,” he said. “Now, we are unable to go that route.”

