More information shared about change of location for Navasota’s Juneteenth event

NAVASOTA, Texas (KBTX) – The City of Navasota is hosting its first Juneteenth celebration on June 22 at City Hall in Downtown.

The event was originally going to be hosted at Grace Park in Navasota but some residents voiced their opposition.

“I don’t think celebrating it in an underdeveloped park and then with the possible origin of all of this coming from exploiting the African American community is the appropriate route to go, I think they deserve much more,” said Taylor Jean Perry, who shared her concerns at a Navasota City Council meeting Wednesday.

She and others feel the city did not spend the time or the effort to plan this federal holiday as they do similar events like the ‘Texas Birthday Bash’ and ‘Sounds of Summer.’

“This particular event is a federal holiday that is so significant for the African Americans, not just within this community but throughout America. So I think it’s very horrible and poor planning on the city’s part that, the fact that they did not afford the African American community the same opportunity with proper planning and celebration as they do these concert and alcoholic related events,” said Perry.

Perry also raised concerns that the park does not have public restrooms, a fire hydrant, or space for parking nearby.

The City of Navasota told KBTX they planned their Juneteenth celebration at the park to bring more awareness to the area and to help revitalize the park.

“Our community members have wanted to bring attention to that park, that is a city park, for years now so when the opportunity came up, we thought this would be a good event to host out there and bring attention and awareness to the park that the city does own,” said Taylor Hughes, City of Navasota’s Marketing and Communications Manager. “We hope to have events out there in the future whether that be another Juneteenth event or something else but we do want to bring awareness and attention to that park.”

Hughes says they began preparations for the Juneteenth event in May.

“One of our councilmen approached us about a month ago to hopefully plan a Juneteenth event, so this was an unbudgeted event for this year and we wanted to put something on for our community so we quickly got to work to host a Juneteenth event. We want to host a good event for everyone in Navasota and visitors to Navasota,” said Hughes.

Hughes added they would have the proper resources to host the event at the park.

“All city events that are even downtown, we use portable restrooms for those restroom facilities and that is for every event,” said Hughes. “In regards to safety concerns, we were aware of those and we were prepared to have fire trucks, EMS, and everything out there to make the event enjoyable, fun, and successful for our community members and we’re going to do the same thing here at city hall.”

Reneda Hubbard is a resident who lives three houses away from the park, she feels the city was exploiting the neighborhood.

“Due to the fact that this is a high-trafficked drug area, I just don’t feel like it’s safe to bring our children out here and let them run around in this open field,” said Hubbard. “It wasn’t pre-planned. I feel like there should’ve been a committee that was put together on this to plan it so we could’ve stepped out with bands, balloons, and everything else, but due to the fact that it wasn’t pre-planned, it was something that was thrown up just to shut everybody’s mouth up.”

“It’s not even being planned on Juneteenth, it’s planned for the 22nd,” Hubbard said. “In my world from what I can see, June 19 is not being honored.”

Hughes shared they are hosting on Saturday so the public can attend other community surrounding events on the 19th.

“The city of Anderson, a surrounding community, hosts its Juneteenth event on Wednesday the 19th this year, so we wanted to support their event as well as ours,” she said.

Another reason for the move, Hughes said, was recent rainfall in the area.

“After visiting the park yesterday morning to develop an event site map, we noticed standing water in a large area on the south side of the park. While our primary concern is always listening to feedback from our community, we were also concerned that, with the rainfall forecast over the next week, there is a possibility for additional standing water throughout the park where we planned to have activities and parking for attendees. We want this to be an enjoyable event for those who attend, without having to be concerned about adequate parking or the condition of the park after several days of rainfall.”

The following is Taylor Jean Perry’s speech to the City Council:

This is the original press release:

Press Release – Celebrate Juneteenth With the City of Navasota (1) by KBTX on Scribd

Originally Press release

This is the latest press release:

Press Release – City of Navasota Juneteenth Celebration New Location by KBTX on Scribd

Latest Press release