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Date: 8/23/2023
LUDLOW — The Board of Selectmen approved a Color Ludlow with Love event to take place at the Memorial Park gazebo on Sept. 16 from 10:30 a.m. to 1 p.m.
Resident Kelly De Gobbi met with the board at its Aug. 15 meeting to request the use of the Memorial Park gazebo and talk more about the event.
De Gobbi originally requested for the event to take place on Sept. 2 but that is the same weekend as Festa, so the Board of Selectmen asked for a backup date which was Sept. 16.
The event will include face painting, live music and snacks.
There will be a snack table set up which will benefit the Gay Straight Alliance at Ludlow High School, according to De Gobbi.
De Gobbi added, “We are looking to bring in a band or a quartet to play some family friendly songs just to kind of get the vibe going and celebrate in town.”
The original request for the event also included a food truck and placing temporary signs around the gazebo.
De Gobbi said, “Early on in the conversation with the Recreation Department I was mentioning a food truck. Given the time constraint I decided to pull that from the agenda this year. We are hoping to have this as an annual event so it would be on the planning agenda for the following years.”
De Gobbi said her idea was to temporarily put up “love is love” signs for duration of the event but the Board of Selectmen stated that the only signs that are permitted on town property must be 501c3 registered local Ludlow nonprofit organizations.
The Board of Selectmen denied the request for signage during the event.
Recently, the Board of Selectmen approved a request to use the Memorial Park gazebo and grounds for a Brave Book Story Hour at its July 25 meeting.
The event took place on Saturday, Aug. 5 from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. in conjunction with the national See You at the Library Movement.
Selectmen Tony Goncalves said at that meeting that he would be abstaining due to the fact of what an event like these could cost the town.
He abstained on Aug. 15 as well.
Goncalves said, “At the end of the day I am going to end up abstaining on this one for the same reason I abstained on the last one. I think in the future we need to sit down and talk about things that are going to happen down there.”
The Board of Selectmen said they had nothing against this event but alluded to the fact that they did not want to get in the middle of two different groups hosting events.
Selectmen Derek DeBarge said, “With the event itself, I don’t have a problem with any of this from the description of it. What I can see is if you want to keep it an annual thing or this group event is going to continue then we may have to consider a different location to do this than the gazebo because if this is going to be some type of tit for tat between one group or another group and all of that then we may have to start thinking of a free speech zone so the Board of Selectmen are taken out of this.”
He added, “The gazebo is not a place for groups to want to do this. Whether you agree with me or not, to me this seems like retribution for another [event] or tit for tat from one group to another as there were plenty of comments on the last one. We don’t want to get into that no matter what the event is.”
De Gobbi added she has marketed the event on Facebook and approximately 50 people have said they are going but she would like everyone to know it is open to the public.