It was a Christmas gift that came early to the Organizers of Hot July Nights in the South Cariboo.
Just two months ago it was looking like there may not be a show this coming Summer as they were about 15 volunteers short to make it happen.
So on December 11th they held an open meeting to see if they could find the help they were looking for.
“55 people showed up,” Chair Marty Mahovlich said, “it proved that the town actually wants this show and sees the importance of it. We had lots of new people that we have never seen before come in and step up. I gave a brief explanation on the history of the show and the purpose of it and a lot of people were quite surprised why we do it which was really good.”
Mahovlich noted that the car show is not a car show to the organization, it’s a mechanism to bring people into our town and support our local businesses by spending their money and having a good time.
“We were down to 8 people on our board and there was no way we could put on Hot July Nights with 8 people and I think we’re sitting at 42 people now. We have a lot of new folks that we have to train and get them involved and hopefully they’ll stick around and hopefully that will cut the work load down so everyone can enjoy it and we’re excited about that.”
Mahovlich said they’re hoping to be active on the actual pre-registrations starting on January first which was their target date so we’re back on schedule for that.
“The car community has been very receptive and we’ve already had at least 20 phone calls on people wanting to register so this is really great that the word’s out there and people want to come here and be a part of it.”
Prior to that open meeting on December 11th Mahovlich was hopeful there would be a good turn out.
“We had arranged to hold this meeting in the Chamber office and by a quarter to 6 we were already moving people into the District office next door, which we had planned to use for a backup. Then we couldn’t find enough chairs which is always a really good problem to have so we went around to the different offices grabbing all the chairs we could find and we still didn’t have enough when the meeting started. We were told they never seen that many people in that room.”
Mahovlich said a lot of the people that took roles on are already wanting to get going so we’ve been working on getting them the tools to get them started.
“I’m thinking this is where the future of Hot July Nights is and down the road these people can take bigger roles as they go and hopefully it just carries on forever.”
In 2024 he estimated they had about 12-thousand spectators show up and that this event takes in an estimated three quarters to a million dollars a year in new money to the town.
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