WITCHINGTONVILLE GETS SPOOKY

By ANDREW FITZPATRICK

ANDREW FITZPATRICK FOR THE WIZARD WEEKLY

Close your eyes.  Picture walking a mile down the road, when all of a sudden you hear  laughter, chatter and festive music being played.  You can smell the aroma of delicious food.  Open your eyes.  BOOM.  You are at Washingtonville’s Vern Allen Park for Witchingtonville.

Witchingtonville took place on Saturday, October 21st, from 3:00 PM to 8:00 PM at Vern Allen Park.  This event was the talk of the town, accumulating over 2,000 people from the community.  Due to the enormous crowd, event parking stretched all around Washingtonville. Unfortunately, many people had to parallel park to get a spot relatively close to the event, which was still about a mile away. 

At this event, there were many local vendors including: Walden Savings Bank, Betty’s Country Kitchen, The Ice Mother, Hudson Heritage Bank and many more set up booths and activities to for the community.  These vendors brought in food, games, music, and even a movie was showed when it got dark.  The money raised at these events went towards those local vendors, or was donated to the town of Washingtonville. 

Douglas Rocke, a 6th grader in Washingtonville Middle School, thought, “Witchingtonville is fun because there is a whole bunch of space here to do whatever,”  He took the time to go to this event and have fun with some of his friends. “They should continue to do this and they should come up with bigger and better ideas for the future.”

What was the reasoning behind Witchingtonville?  How will this event help Washingtonville in the future?  Mr. Bucco, the newly elected mayor and teacher at Washingtonville High School, has lived in Washingtonville for many years.  He weighed in, “The goal of Witchingtonville was to bring the people of Washingtonville together.  We are finally able to become a community again.  I’m trying to bring people together with events like this.”

In addition to Witchingtonville, the town is also taking multiple steps to improve community life in Washingtonville.   This past Sunday, the town took steps towards creating a town park by planting trees and shrubs around the area where they plan to open the park.  Mayor Bucco also has plans for the lot across from Betty’s Country Kitchen.  He plans to open it to juniors and seniors to park before school, and the town will collect a small fee from each student that parks there.  This money will go towards the town, which benefits both the students who drive to school, as well as the town.

Since Joe Bucco became the Mayor, Washingtonville continues to grow as a community.  As mayor, he has been actively involved in numerous community events, such as Witchingtonville, bringing the people of Washingtonville closer than ever.