While partygoers are enjoying this weekend's Halloween festivities, there is a crew of city employees and community volunteers to make sure it happens safely.
The Athens Clean and Safe Halloween Committee is a nonprofit organization that organizes volunteers for the weekend and coordinates the musical entertainment Uptown during Halloween weekend.
We've been putting music on Court Street to help control the crowd since about 1990
and it's developed through cooperation from the city said Jonathan Holmberg, committee chair and the driving force behind the organization.
In addition to providing music, the committee constructs and deconstructs the stages, monitors pedestrian traffic around the stages and judges the costume contest.
The committee oversees the funding for the stage shows and costume prizes, which come from sponsorships and fundraisers. Over $1,500 in prizes is awarded to the best male, best female and best group costumes at the end of Saturday night.
Some of the local sponsors include Casa Cantina, the Union Bar and Grill, Bagel Street Deli, The Blue Gator, 19 South and Goodfella's Pizza. Budweiser also contributes to help cover the cost of the entertainment equipment, such as lighting and speakers. Bands are not paid for their performance, Holmberg said.
Local volunteers are not the only ones working to make sure Halloween weekend runs smoothly.
City officials from the police, fire and street departments will be working together to block off streets, monitor traffic flow and watch out for the general safety of weekend partiers.
The city's been doing this in an organized fashion since Mayor Ric Abel became mayor. They saw the potential danger and steadily worked a way to see what they could do to make it safer. We've got it down now after 12 years said Steve Pierson, director of code enforcement.
The office of code enforcement will contribute as well.
What we basically try to do is help the vendors and accommodate anything they might need
Pierson said.
Pierson noted there will be nine food vendors and two nonprofit vendors uptown who paid $500 for a space and $100 more for electricity. The vendors must be cleared out by 4 a.m., an hour after the partygoers, in order to give the Athens Street Department room to clean the streets.
The streets are cleared with leaf blowers that move debris out of the cracks in the street, and then with street sweepers that take up the trash and wash the streets, he said.
Pierson said it takes about two hours to clean the party area and normally is done by dawn.
Some people say Uptown looks as good as it ever looks at 6 a.m. after Halloween
Pierson said.
' Gail Burkhardt contributed to this story
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