Dia de los Muertos Celebration Moves to West Palm Beach's The Peach on Nov. 7 After a Budget Cut

The Day of the Dead holiday honoring ancestors starts Sunday, Nov. 1, but Palm Beach County's biggest annual celebration of it will come a week late and in a new city this year, the Palm Beach Post reported Oct. 31. The popular event that usually filled the downtown streets of Lake Worth Beach will instead be held Saturday, Nov. 7, in a smaller venue at The Peach Art Collective, at Georgia Avenue and Southern Boulevard in West Palm Beach - 3950 Georgia Ave., beneath the Southern Boulevard overpass, according to Stet News - as part of the November ArtWalk. This year's festival is free and starts at 3 p.m., with skeleton face painting for children, ofrendas where attendees can submit offerings for deceased loved ones, a DJ and live music by singer Liz Ramirez playing tunes by the 1990s Tejano performer Selena, the Post reported.

The move followed an unexpected state budget cut. Organizer Jose Mendez helped start the celebration in 2016 in downtown Lake Worth Beach, and since then the city's Community Redevelopment Agency has helped its organizers in partnership with the nonprofit LULA Lake Worth Arts, the Post reported. This summer LULA cut funding to the festival after its usual source, the Florida Department of Cultural Affairs, reduced its spending following a state budget cut approved by lawmakers and Gov. Ron DeSantis, and the CRA got no state money this year. Mendez, an artist in residence at The Peach, asked its owner, Rodney Mayo, to host the Day of the Dead, and has been building in under two months a festival usually planned over half a year. To raise the estimated $4,000 needed for this year's scaled-back festival, he has applied for a grant from the Cultural Council for Palm Beach County and will fundraise through the end of the festival, the Post reported.

Mendez said he hopes the celebration returns to Lake Worth Beach in 2027, and the Post reported he is not scared of raising the money himself if the government grant that has paid for it since 2016 dies: "I don't think $25,000 is a lot of money" to raise, he said, especially for how much business the holiday brings. One risk he named is Amendment 3 on the Nov. 3 ballot: if at least 60 percent of Florida voters pass it, raising the homestead property tax exemption to $150,000 in 2027 and $250,000 in 2028, Mendez said the main source of money for the event will likely dry up.