Council approves $142,495.51 budget amendment for 2024 Tejas Fest; staff recommends two-day free festival for 2025

The Victoria City Council on March 4 voted to amend the city’s FY2024-25 budget to cover a $142,495.51 shortfall from the October 2024 Tejas Fest, a bicentennial-era downtown festival that city staff said drew an estimated 10,000–15,000 attendees.

City events director Joel Novakson told the council the inaugural Tejas Fest delivered strong local participation and measurable tourism impacts, but costs—particularly entertainer fees and vendor services—exceeded the original event budget. “If you attended Tejas Fest, our inaugural event this past October, you will know that we had a phenomenal event,” Novakson said during a presentation that summarized attendance, vendor sales and advertising performance.

Novakson said the event team estimated a modest outside-economic impact and measurable hotel benefit: data from a targeted digital ad campaign identified 218 visitors who traveled to Victoria after seeing ads, producing an estimated 50 hotel room nights and an estimated $36,000 in direct economic impact from that campaign. Using a simple model of $50 per-person local spending and assuming 5% of attendees came from outside Victoria, staff estimated roughly…