City Council Receives WAMSB 2023 Update from City Recorder Randy Sanders

January 8, 2023

Mountaineer News

Buckhannon City Council

City Recorder & Information Coordinator Randy Sanders and City Councilman CJ Rylands display the WAMSB travelling flag at the January 5, 2022 City Council meeting.

BUCKHANNON - During the first Buckhannon City Council meeting of 2023, City Recorder & Information Coordinator Randy Sanders provided a long-awaited WAMSB 2023 update.

"I had alluded to this in closing remarks of 2022 that I be coming forward with much more information about WAMSB in 2023, and we're working on a six month-out news release. We will get with the media very, very soon on that," Sanders said.

"Normally, I use this time of Council remarks and announcements to talk about it, but I felt that we should start making some of the more… the items that will take more of a discussion, instead of holding them back for that last minute when it should be about positivity in all this - and this is about positivity - we should bring these up to agenda… but I would encourage other councilmembers, if they have something that they need to have a broader discussion to submit to make it on the agenda," he said. Watch the full segment here:

Sanders went on to provide a WASMB 2023 volunteer update and explained minor changes that had been made to their committee meetings.

"We had a very good board meeting today for WAMSB. We meet every two weeks. We're going to start reaching out more to the community we have several people who have signed up to be volunteers to the volunteer center on our City website and the WAMSB website, and we're going to start having more committee meetings now several times a week, so we'll have shorter meetings with fewer people and then report back to the board with the results," Sanders said.

He then provided a full list of commitments that have been received thus far from bands around the globe. Watch the full segment here:

Sanders explained that attrition is to be expected with the some the committed bands due to certain circumstances, such as visa issues or the lack of funds to attend.

"Now, they're registered, they're paying their dues to come in, they still have the visa process to go through. Some of these embassies put them on a very tight window. We’ve lost a couple of bands because there are some countries who are not issuing visas until 2025. So, I expect there will be some attrition... That we'll lose a few of these bands because of visa problems (or) maybe some that can't get the final dollars put together…” Sanders said.

Sanders recently travelled to Chicago, Illinois to attend the Midwest Clinic International Band, Orchestra and Music Conference. Watch the full segment here:

While in Chicago, Sanders met with the director of last year's 2022 event from Bangkok, Thailand.

"This is a tradition that goes from country to country to country. It's the traveling flag that is displayed over the competition. You'll see on the edges here the names of every country this flag has flown in, and it'll fly over the competition here. So, we're now in possession of the official WAMSB traveling flag, " Sanders said.

"This (flag) last flew in Bangkok, Thailand. We're going to keep it here and it'll fly over the festivities of the competition in Buckhannon, West Virginia, USA, and then at the conclusion of our competition, representatives from Rastede, Germany, who will be in attendance, will take the flag with them back to Germany. So, it is official," he proclaimed. Watch the full segment here: