Archive: Around Town

When visitors enter Myers Park for the fourth annual Lansing Harbor Festival Saturday (August 14th) they will experience a great day of music, food, activities, and fun.  What many don't realize is that the festival is entirely a volunteer effort with enormous community support.  The Lansing Community Council, also made up entirely of volunteers, hosts the event that is calculated to celebrate the community and bring people together.

"I feel very supported by the community," says festival chairwoman Karen Veaner.  "Even now in these last final days before the festival when I am starting to panic about whether we'll have enough people to park the cars -- my phone is ringing with people saying 'What can I do?'"


Admission to the festival is free, and Veaner says she wants to keep it that way.  But that means that the Community Council has to raise the money in other ways.  While the festival has some corporate sponsors, much of the money is raised by selling program advertisements, promotional items like T-shirts and sun-catchers, the ubiquitous Lansing chicken barbecues, and this year by selling hamburgers, hot dogs, and sausage at the Thursday night concerts in the park.

But with so much Community Council activity that pulled both money and volunteer resources from the community to build the Myers Park Playground Project (MP3) and Lansing's historic log cabin, Veaner was worried about raising enough money for this year's festival.

"That's a huge commitment in time and money for the community to take on, especially at a time when people are having rough financial issues," she says.  "But this town has amazing resources, and that is its people and business owners.  We've certainly put ourselves in a good financial situation with the (sales at the Thursday concerts).  Our goal is always to operate in the black and to pay for the festival.  We feel very strongly that if the community can't support this that it doesn't want it.  But clearly the community does want it."

Veaner lists numerous corporate and individual donors, and singles out Cargill as a long-time supporter of the Harbor Festival.  In addition to being a financial sponsor of the festival this year they will be holding a raffle to raise money for backpacks filled with school supplies for children in need in the Lansing schools.  The prize will be meat packages that are normally reserved for restaurant use.

"Another thing that is exciting this year is the ribbon cutting for the log cabin," Veaner says.  "The number of people who have contributed to that project is really amazing.  Al Roy, whose Lindell Cedar Homes assembled the cabin in Myers Park, will be there all day to tell people about the process of building the cabin.  Carl Cote and Results Renovation and Repair have donated over 100 hours in chinking and building doors and windows. In the program you are going to see a list of people who donated $150 or more to the cabin, but there is also another list three times as long of people who made smaller donations.  I was really touched by the amount of support by the community for the cabin and Bud Shattuck who got the ball rolling."


The Lansing Community Council funnels United Way funding to the Lansing Recreation Department, Lansing Older Adult Program (LOAP), Lansing Drop-In Program, Lansing Youth Services, Emergency aid for local people in need, and funding to additional Lansing services such as the schools and the library as funds are available.  That means year 'round fund raising that has been very successful over the past four years.

"I don't know why I am still surprised when (Lansing Community Council President) Ed LaVigne tells me he's going to raise a truckload of money for some community project," Veaner says.  "But then he does it.  And this community has pulled together in an amazingly short time, not only financially, but also in terms of volunteer hours to build a beautiful playground that the children of Lansing and visitors to Lansing are already enjoying.  It has increased the traffic to the park enormously. I think that has done a lot to bring the community together."

She says that one of the prime goals of the council is for the community to come together and to improve the quality of life for all citizens of the Town and Village of Lansing.  That means the council is not only looking for funding and volunteers, but also for ideas.


"We love to hear from the community what they would like to see in next year's festival," she says.  "We also like to hear from them if there are other types of events or projects they would like the council to participate in."

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