Solon Township and the Cedar Polka Fest held a special meeting Thursday to discuss the community festival’s future goals and visions.
“We want to try and have an open dialogue as to what the goals of the Cedar Poker Fest Foundation were and to find out how the Solon Township Board views our goals and how they’d like to work with us,” spokesperson Lisa Rossi-Brett said. “We are finally at a place where we are going to be working together to make sure that the Cedar Polka Fest goes on forever and stays in Cedar and that we continue to help improve things in Cedar. We will work together with a common goal.”
The 43rd annual Polka Festival will occur Thursday, August 21-24.
The township and foundation relationship soured last June, less than 90 days before the event, when the two entities still didn’t have an agreement for use of township park property. Community members packed the town hall for one of the most intense series of meetings on the Leelanau Peninsula in 2025 over lack of payment from the festival that rented out the park for nearly nothing over most of its four decade tenure.
The Polka Fest and Solon Township met last December to negotiate an agreement and fee that will cost the festival roughly $3,000. Most of the event happens on the tennis court.
“We’re feeling very good that we’re in a good place,” Rossi-Brett said. “It became very apparent that we had the same goals, but it’s been a real lack of communication that was causing all the angst in the past.
“Our goal would be is to let’s figure out a common project, something that we need in Cedar that we can help with financially instead of being charged,” she said. “Last year, we were making notes and planning for 2025 at the event.
“Let’s change this, let’s get that. Let’s get this ... We’ve been all year working on contracts, going to seminars, getting educated, making our event better, working on adding new events.,” Rossie-Brett said. “We’ve got some new stuff coming this year.”
