The Tempe (Arizona) committee has dropped their unopposed bid to host the 2023 Westercon because the recovery from the pandemic has not moved quickly enough to assure them the region’s fans will support and attend their con. They are now considering a bid for 2025.
They announced on the bid’s website:
With sadness, CASFS and WesternSFA are officially withdrawing our bid to host Westercon 75 in Tempe, AZ in 2023.
This is because of the ongoing effects of the COVID pandemic. While we expect that the country as a whole and the southwest in particular will be much more open in 2023 than it is today, that expectation has sadly not translated into support for Westercon 75 thus far and choosing to continue at this point would put both our sponsoring bodies at serious risk. We cannot survive on local fans alone. We also need regional fans to be ready to travel again and it’s clear that they’re not comfortable doing that yet.
The prudent option, which was taken unanimously by our committee and both our sponsoring bodies, is to withdraw at this time but to ready a future bid for a time when the wider community is hopefully ready to return to a physical Westercon.
Our current plan is to submit an equivalent bid to host Westercon 77 in Tempe in 2025, once we’ve agreed a contract with our hotel in mid-2022.
The bid was a joint effort of the Western Science Fiction Association and the Central Arizona Speculative Fiction Society.
Kevin Standlee explained on the Westercon.org that the site selection process for 2023 will be conducted at Loscon 47 in November 2021, because this year’s Westercon was merged into Loscon after the original Westercon 73 committee disbanded and handed the convention over to LASFS, owner of the Westercon service mark.
Standlee also told File 770: “Because Westercon’s deadlines are hard-coded into the Bylaws, we’re not allowed to reopen filing to be on the ballot. Bids can still file, though, and be eligible to win. There will still be an election (at Loscon), but if no eligible bid wins, it will go to the Business Meeting (at Loscon), and if the meeting can’t decide, then as you probably know, LASFS will have to decide.”
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This Pandemic seems like its going to stubbornly impact us far longer than I anticipated.
Such a painful call to have to make, after all the work and planning.
In the meantime, Westercon 74 in 2022 is a sure thing.
As Adrienne said, planning for Westercon 74 continues apace. Some of the members of the committee will be gathering in Tonopah the weekend after what would have been the originally-scheduled convention dates before the postponement to 2022 for a site inspection and committee meeting. Given that the only people on the committee who had ever been there before are Lisa Hayes and me, I’m very much looking forward to showing people the site.
As the person responsible for much of the wording of the current Westercon Bylaws (some of which was inherited from previous versions), I wish we had used relative deadlines (as Worldcon does) rather than hard-coded ones. It would have allowed us to reopen filing for the ballot should another group wish to enter the race for Westercon 75 without having to run as a write-in candidate.
And speaking of filing deadlines, June 18 was 180 days out from the official opening of DisCon III, so that deadline has passed, and all bids that filed before that time are on the ballot.
I friended the bid, like is my usual custom. I hope they forward my money to the next Westercon or a future Westercon.
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