The Dunedin Midwinter carnival has grown year on year to become one of Dunedin's best free public events. Last year 25,000 people attended showing its year-on-year growth and how popular it was becoming. But because of its popularity and the additional costs with servicing such a large crowd they have had to cancel the old format instead to do a paid scaled down version to keep crowd sizes down and raise the funds they need to support it. They are also moving away from the Octagon location which helped our centre city hospitality businesses.

This petition is not about the organisers. This was a great public service put together by awesome volunteers. This petition is to the Dunedin City Council (DCC). You waste rate payers money on so many pointless projects (feel free to add your own personal “favourites” in the comments, my ‘favourite’ was the ‘parklets’) and we are about to lose something that was genuinely special about the city. It must remain free to help low-income families access an awesome night of free entertainment. It must remain in the Octagon to help local business.

DCC it’s simple:

1.     Provide more streets for the parade so the crowds can stretch out further (thus also helping more inner-city businesses)

2.     Fund the toilets, traffic management and security services to keep the Midwinter Carnival in the Octagon and safe

3.     Pay for a storage location for the lanterns and other devices needed to run the parade and events

4.     Pay for an awesome fireworks display at the end (I thought this would have been a good idea for last time, but it will need your help to pull it off! Consider this the icing on the cake)

5.     And any other help they need so the volunteers can keep this event growing!

If you agree with me then please sign this petition so we can get the attention of DCC.