City of Helen Council Meeting: Southern Worthersee 2015 Video
Well another year, and another after Southern Worthersee discussion comes up. Where do you draw the line between making money and safety? That seems to be the discussion in this Helen City Council Meeting. Every year since 2013 SOWO has increased in the amount of foolery. And over the years the staff and Helen Police have tried to be lenient with everyone and allow certain things to happen. In this video you can hear a lot of the business owners plead their case about keeping it and tightening up police presence in order to keep SOWO in Helen for the revenue. They even offered a curfew for the event, which to me is a great idea. That would get everyone off the street, and back to their hotels or cabins and cut down on a lot of the craziness. But the issue of safety and “what ifs” dominated the meeting. And as of today the city of Helen has decided to ban the event. As an adult I can understand both sides of the debate, but as an enthusiast I just want to see SOWO return in 2016.
I, unfortunately, missed SOWO this year and would really hate to see it go next year; this also means that I was not there to see the chaos. However, I have realized that a lot of the town citizens are using the excuse that “the crowd is too large”. As a student at the University of Georgia, when I have experienced crowds of over +30k people crammed into Athens on a game day, I have never seen a large confrontation or issue; whether it be fighting or an excessive amount of littering, Of course there may be confrontations every once in a while, but they are normally solved immediately. As opposed to having game days almost every weekend during the fall, SOWO is only four days long. I wish that Helen could somehow model what other venues do for large events and keep SOWO going, rather than just banning it for future show-goers or enthusiasts that missed prior SOWO events. The event really does bring more tourists and revenue to the town. Had it not been for SOWO, a few years ago, I may have never even heard of Helen.
It’s not the size of the crowd, is the lack of maturity from the SOWO group.
Pingback: Southern Wörthersee 2015 | The Final Chapter | SOUTHRNFRESH