{"id":101506,"date":"2018-02-02T19:04:51","date_gmt":"2018-02-03T02:04:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/new-mancos-days-association-gears-up-for-summer-festival\/"},"modified":"2018-02-02T19:04:51","modified_gmt":"2018-02-03T02:04:51","slug":"new-mancos-days-association-gears-up-for-summer-festival","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/new-mancos-days-association-gears-up-for-summer-festival\/","title":{"rendered":"New Mancos Days Association gears up for summer festival"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"A
A player gets a hit in the Mancos Days softball tournament in 2017.<\/span>Stephanie Alderton\/The Journal<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

The newly formed Mancos Days Association met Thursday to plan for this year\u2019s Mancos Days festival.<\/p>\n

In past years, the annual summer festival has been organized by the town, but in 2017 the board of trustees handed it over to the Association, a group of volunteers, in order to reduce spending and demands on town employees\u2019 time. Several members said they were short on time and organization during their first year of planning the event, so they plan to get a running start this year. In a meeting attended by the Mancos Valley Chamber of Commerce administrator and several volunteers from last year\u2019s celebration, the Association revealed a logo, theme and tentative budget for the 2018 Mancos Days, and discussed options for increasing local involvement.<\/p>\n

This year\u2019s Mancos Days theme will be \u201cA Little Piece of Heaven.\u201d The logo drawn up by the Association shows a mountain landscape with a puzzle piece cut out of it, revealing the \u201cWelcome to Mancos Valley\u201d sign outside town.<\/p>\n

The association\u2019s four leaders said they want to respect the traditions involved with Mancos Days, but also mentioned a few things they want to change. One problem, association president Lacey Murphy said, is that the festival often draws more vendors and guests from outside the Mancos area than from within it.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur number one priority is to get the community involved,\u201d she said. \u201cThe number two goal is, we want to get the school and the youth involved.\u201d<\/p>\n

Members of the association brainstormed new ways to get local teenagers interested in Mancos Days, saying the traditional Teen Dance has been poorly attended in recent years.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re kind of steering away from a dance, because kids don\u2019t dance anymore,\u201d Treasurer Elecia Bellmire said.<\/p>\n

Instead, she suggested the association organize a gaming night for the festival\u2019s teen activity.<\/p>\n

This year\u2019s theme was the result of a drawing contest the association held last year, but Bellmire said some town residents weren\u2019t happy with the way the winner was chosen. Several attendees at the meeting said they thought the contest was a good idea, but recommended the organizers get a third party to judge entries for this year.<\/p>\n

Another organizational change is that this year, all donations to Mancos Days will go directly to the association, instead of to the individual committees that organize each event. Bellmire said she believes locals will be more inclined to donate if only one group is soliciting money for the event, rather than several different committees.<\/p>\n

Murphy said the group will be seeking more town residents to organize events. She emphasized that the association will continue to support things like the annual softball tournament and the Mancos Days Queen award, but said they\u2019re open to new ideas as well.<\/p>\n

The Association\u2019s fundraising goal for this year is $33,750, which, based on the estimated $16,000 cost of the event, would leave $17,750 in profits, out of which the festival traditionally donates to local youth programs and charities.<\/p>\n

Eli Cover, who organized the disc golf tournament at last year\u2019s Mancos Days festival, said he was excited to work with the Association again this year.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think this is a fresh start for Mancos Days,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Mancos Days 2018 will be held in downtown Mancos on July 28 through 30.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

to inspire more local involvement<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":101507,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5736,5735],"tags":[21,510,13,83],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-101506","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local-news","category-news","tag-cortez","tag-festive-event-including-carnival","tag-frontpage-lead","tag-mancos"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101506","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=101506"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101506\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/101507"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=101506"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=101506"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=101506"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=101506"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}