OBSERVER file photo Last summer, Fredonia did not hold summer concerts due to a lack of funding.

Fredonia village officials want to bring back the summer concert series.

“Last year we did not have one because we didn’t have any money — good reason,” said Trustee Paul Wandel, bringing up the matter at a village Board of Trustees workshop. “What the mayor is discussing is…we’d still like to have one, maybe modify it a little bit from what we had.”

Mayor Michael Ferguson did not attend the workshop, but Wandel and Trustee Jon Espersen spoke for him about the concert series.

Wandel noted the village concert series in 2024 was held on eight consecutive Wednesdays in Barker Common. “If we’re going to have this, No. 1 we need to secure funding, and No. 2, we would need to start booking our music schedule sooner rather than later.”

Wandel continued, “One of the ideas of funding that the mayor has is sponsorship. For example, the city of Dunkirk has a sponsorship program for their Music on the Pier. I think that we as a village can follow that same kind of direction to fund this.

“Is this a necessary thing for the village? Well, that can be argued. But I really think it’s part of the cultural aspect for this community, so I would like to promote that. So how do we do that, how do we secure sponsorship funding? I don’t have a good answer on that. It’s going to take some people to do that work. So I’d just like to bring it up for discussion… but I think if we’re going to do it, we should have it on our radar right now.

Espersen commented, “I think the mayor has spoken with a couple different businesses that are expressing an interest in it. I’m sure there’s no contract signed yet.

“He also talked about changing it from Wednesdays to Fridays. I attended a couple of them two years ago on Wednesdays and it was not well attended. It wasn’t a lot of bang for the buck, there were maybe 50 people in the park, perhaps, the couple nights I was there.”

“I don’t disagree, but how well did we promote it at the same time?” Wandel wondered.

“We used the promoter that we had used in the past and he had a list of bands that he had access to,” Espersen replied. “I think what we had decided after that was to kind of take a holistic view of the whole thing and maybe start from scratch.”

Espersen said community group Embrace Fredonia “may have an interest in joining whatever organization schedules and sponsors…the music series, if there is going to be one.”

He said that a possible 2026 summer music series for Fredonia is “still kind of being formulated.”