Report by Councilman Rob Smout, August 16, 2012 4th of July Debrief- 2012 The 4th of July was on a Wednesday this year. Similar to other years, we had the same assignments as a City Council. I was responsible for the games and raffle. For the third year, we sold red game tickets for $.25, blue two-part raffle tickets for $1, and a wrist band for the slide $1. We did not offer a package of 18 games tickets and a wrist band for $5 as we had done other years due to complaints that people had too many red tickets left over at the end. We decided not to sell yellow meal tickets ($3 for hamburger, $2 for hotdog) because they were taking money at the food table. Again, we had a serious rush for tickets at the beginning. Karen Van Leeuwen, Pam and Kelly Slater and Kristine Smout helped sell tickets. Jennie DeVries helped at the beginning until everyone could get to the table. We had the same set of game for the carnival games this year: Wheel of Fortune, Can Smash, Ring Toss, Plinko, and Frog Catcher. We had the giant slide again this year. They were there from 11 to 2. I bought 52 dozen prizes and 30 dozen pieces of candy. We have a few of the prizes left over for the first time. The candy was gone. We started about 11 am and shut down at 1:45. Lines for games were gone by 1:30. The less popular prizes were the wrist bands (although they were popular last year - it could be the quantity.) Add those to the list of things never to buy along with book marks and the buttons and pins. The sunglasses, necklaces, balls, wrist bands, were popular. I purchased all the prizes from Oriental Trading Company. They seem to have the best prices. The candy was purchased from Sam's Club. For the raffle, we had categories of prizes again this year. We had home, outdoors, boys, girls, and the Grand Prize was a 4 burner grill. Things that worked well: Combo meal: We sold a combo meal for $3 instead of separate meal and drink tickets. We have plenty of tickets left over. We shouldn't need to buy any next year. Individual sodas were sold for $.50. Carnival games: game choice was excellent. We had the same ones kids love and the Frog game fun. The First Methodist Church ran the game booths this year. We paid them $175 for running this for us. They were all great kids and ran the games exceptionally well. The tents were against the west fence which also broke up the congestion of having everything packed into one small area. We spent a total of about $451.25 on prizes and candy for the games. Stage activities: Things kept moving which was good. We had smaller breaks and the activities were fun. The swimming noodle with the spatula/pie eating contest was fun. Will Holly was our MC again this year and as always, he did an excellent job. Becky is AMAZING at getting everything organized so well. Nice Job!!! 81