Balloon Festival Losses A Problem In Ascension

DONALDSONVILLE, La. (AP) — Ascension Parish officials are taking a hard look at a parish sponsored event — the Louisiana Balloon Championship Festival — after that event took a sizeable loss on paid attendance this year.

Aattendance for the three-day event in September at the Lamar-Dixon Expo Center was 35,000, down from 60,000.

With $158,369 in expenses still unpaid by the event's organizing nonprofit organization, the Parish Council Finance Committee voted Thursday to form a subcommittee to evaluate what went wrong. The panel will discuss what to do about the pending bills and how to proceed with the event.

This was the second year the parish-owned Lamar-Dixon center hosted the event after the Pennington Biomedical Research Center in Baton Rouge stopped hosting a balloon festival because of safety concerns.