Market Day will be no more at Willoughby Heritage Farm. The Collinsville Area Recreation District has canceled the weekly summer event, as well as the annual bluegrass festival and the summer concert series.

Interim Director Rick Robbins said the canceled events are a result of budget reductions and low attendance.

"Market Days has been a struggle since we started a couple of years ago," Robbins said. "The bluegrass festival has a $10,000 outlay for the park district with only a few hundred in attendance, and we are also looking at other possibilities like the summer concert series and other things that are mostly cash outlay."

Robbins said that with a more than $333,000 reduction in the tax levy, the park district will be looking at numerous ways to tighten its belt. In December, the district's board of commissioners approved a decreased tax levy, which is the amount raised through property taxes. Robbins said that reduction will affect the budget for the district's next fiscal year, which starts May 1; the board has not approved the budget yet.

To print their program, an overview of the summer offerings, the district has to make decisions about what events to cancel before the budget is approved.

"What we do know is that our tax levy for general, recreation and museum funds, we do know that number and that has been decreased by over $300,000," Robbins said. "That's where we're going to take a hard look — from everything from programs to facilities to staffing — it all comes into play. We're certainly making cutbacks."

Robbins said the district could also cut funding for training, travel and organization memberships.

Board president Mary Ann Bitzer, who was the only board member to vote against the decreased levy, said she was disappointed that the district will be operating on such a bare-bones budget.

"They've decimated the budget," Bitzer said of the board members who voted to approve the reduced levy. "They said they were going to find money (for events and programs) from somewhere else. They didn't find it. Now we're working on a much lower budget and something has to give."

Commissioner Andrew Carruthers, who proposed the decreased levy amount, said re-evaluating the feasibility of events and programs should be something the park district is doing on a regular basis anyway.

"Whether or not we reduced the operation levy, just like any organization, we need to look at the events we put on and review whether it's worth it," Carruthers said. "Certainly we don't have events for making money or to be profitable. The reason we have events is to have fun recreational activities. The problem is not all events are as well-attended to justify the cost."

Contact reporter Ramona C. Sanders at 618-344-0264, ext. 136