Point Fortin May­or Clyde James has con­firmed that this year’s Bor­ough Day cel­e­bra­tions have been sig­nif­i­cant­ly short­ened, with some an­tic­i­pat­ed events left off the cal­en­dar due to chal­lenges in plan­ning and bud­get­ing.

De­spite these set­backs, James re­mains op­ti­mistic about the fu­ture of the event, promis­ing changes in the cel­e­bra­tion dy­nam­ics that will be “tak­ing Trinidad by storm.”

In­ter­viewed last Fri­day dur­ing the Point Fortin Bor­ough Cor­po­ra­tion’s mil­i­tary pa­rade, which is one of the high­lights of the cel­e­bra­tions, James said, “We had to cut back a lot of things that we nor­mal­ly have done for our cel­e­bra­tions,” he ex­plained. 

The may­or said the most no­table changes in­clude the can­cel­la­tion of the May­or’s Ball, the May­or’s All-In­clu­sive, and sev­er­al sport­ing events.

Tra­di­tion­al­ly, Bor­ough Day is one of the most ea­ger­ly await­ed events in Point Fortin. How­ev­er, he said this year’s fes­tiv­i­ties were im­pact­ed by the late Car­ni­val sea­son and the Lenten pe­ri­od, which de­layed the usu­al plan­ning process.

“We had some chal­lenges, one be­cause of the late Car­ni­val sea­son. It af­fect­ed our plan­ning for the Bor­ough Day cel­e­bra­tion be­cause we did not want to start any plan­ning in the Lenten pe­ri­od,” James said.  

Re­call­ing that the event was launched on April 19, he said, “We did not want to start any plan­ning in the Lenten pe­ri­od that is why our launch was so late, and it on­ly gave us two weeks to put our whole pro­gramme to­geth­er for us to cul­mi­nate in the first Sat­ur­day in the month of May.”   

Not­ing that April 30 marks the 45th an­niver­sary of Point Fortin’s bor­ough sta­tus, he ex­plained that the bor­ough typ­i­cal­ly cen­tres its ac­tiv­i­ties around this date. How­ev­er, many events had to be scaled back or resched­uled this year.

Fur­ther com­pli­ca­tions arose, he ex­plained, with the call for na­tion­al elec­tions, which changed the dy­nam­ics of the planned fes­tiv­i­ties. As a re­sult, some events re­lat­ed to schools, in­clud­ing mono­logue and es­say writ­ing com­pe­ti­tions, will be held post-Bor­ough Day.

De­spite these chal­lenges, James ex­pressed sat­is­fac­tion with the com­mu­ni­ty’s re­sponse.

“So far, we have been go­ing quite well, even though we have a short­ened and trun­cat­ed pro­gramme. The re­sponse from the burgess­es of Point Fortin has been great,” he said.  The high­ly an­tic­i­pat­ed Pan on the Move and J’Ou­vert cel­e­bra­tions—two of the main at­trac­tions—are still set to take place next Sat­ur­day.  De­spite to­day’s out­come at the polls, the may­or em­pha­sised the need for con­tin­ued sup­port to en­sure the growth of the event in fu­ture years. I need sup­port for us to con­tin­ue and to grow,” he said, adding, “I need sup­port for us to con­tin­ue to grow, and we need sup­port of all stake­hold­ers. We got some but some have cut back the amount of in­volve­ment be­cause of the dy­nam­ics they had to stretch their hands in dif­fer­ent di­rec­tions,” said James.