October’s El Tigre Fest marks the end of an era in Tigard. The annual day-long celebration of Hispanic culture will be the last city-thrown community event.
Tigard’s 2027 budget adopted earlier this year eliminates El Tigre and other publicly produced special events – Pride Parade & Festival, Juneteenth Freedom Celebration, and the Fourth of July Celebration – to help bridge a $6 million gap in the city’s general fund.
“Last year, we faced difficult budget decisions and had to prioritize the core services our community relies on every day,” said City Manager Brian Rager. “While community events are valuable and bring people together, producing events is not a core city service.”
Combined spending for the celebrations rose sharply between 2021 and 2025, climbing from about $29,500 to nearly $314,000 over five years, according to a city staff cost analysis conducted last year.
City Council directed staff to look for places to trim event costs ahead of the 2027 budget meetings. Those recommendations underwent a public review process before Budget Committee members green-lighted and forwarded the entire budget back to Council for adoption.
“I do not like that we had to cut this funding,” Mayor Yi-Kang Hu said. “At the same time, I respect the difficult recommendation staff made in response to the City’s financial situation.”
City officials say they are working to find outside promoters to take over the festivals, hoping each will return next year under new direction.
“Ultimately, these are something we’d like to see community partners continue. We are starting to have some conversations with some partners to see how these events could continue in future years, just not organized by the city,” Assistant to the City Manager Nicole Hendrix said at a May budget meeting.
According to Tigard spokesperson Kimberlee Ables, the city is not presently naming those potential future promoters. Per city policy, all direct media communications are funneled through her.
Though the city only began helming the Fourth of July and Pride events in 2021 and Juneteenth and El Tigre in 2022, some had earlier origins within other organizations or events.
For 2026, the city attempted to obtain sponsorships for each to defray costs. But the events remain too pricey to continue in the upcoming year.
“They have grown significantly each year, particularly in staffing and contractual costs given the planning and logistics it takes to create and put on these events,” Hendrix told the budget committee in May. “This includes things like police overtime, public works overtime, city management staff time.”
Additionally, events take place on weekends or holidays, driving up staffing expenses.
The year-over-year Fourth of July tab soared from about $23,500 in 2021 to nearly $143,000 in 2025 when the city briefly moved from pyrotechnics to a drone show and expenses peaked, making it the most expensive event in city history.
The Tigard Old-Fashioned Fourth of July Celebration dates back more than five decades to 1970, when local man Joe Chamberlin hosted a small fireworks display beside his Walnut Street home.
When it outgrew his space, he formed a 15-member committee – including his son, John Chamberlin, and former Tigard Music owner Ron Royse – to run the event and move it first to Tigard High School and eventually to Cook Park.
Tigard Tualatin School District and the city launched the Pride and the Juneteenth Freedom Celebrations in 2021. El Tigre began in 2022 as a spinoff from a smaller Latino festival that had piggybacked onto the city’s annual Street Fair.
At the time, City Digital Communications coordinator Leandro Barrientos told Tigard Life that city leadership developed the plan to separate the Latino festival to celebrate Tigard’s robust Latino population.
“Tigard’s Latino population is 11.9 percent, and they contribute a lot to our culture and our economy,” he said at the time. “We have a lot of Latino businesses – restaurants and stores – that have been here for decades, and this is an awesome opportunity for people to experience them.”
El Tigre returns to Cook Family Park Oct. 3, 2026, with a day of live music and performances, children’s games, face painting and more than 70 booths featuring food, local artisans, and community resources.
Costs climbed from $79,000 to more than $107,000 between 2024 and 2025, while festival attendance, which had been steadily climbing, fell sharply from about 5,000 to about 2,500 in the same period.
Projected El Tigre and combined 2026 event costs were not available at press time. The city is currently soliciting sponsors to help curb this year’s costs.
What comes next is uncertain.
“We hope community partners will consider continuing these events, and we are ready to share our experience, lessons learned and planning guidance to support their success,” Rager said.
