Photo Provided Children participate in a pie eating contest during a past St. Clairsville Community Day event.

ST. CLAIRSVILLE — It’s that time of the year again — the St. Clairsville Parks and Recreation Department is hosting its annual Community Day event on Saturday.

The free event will begin at 4:30 p.m. at 102 Fair Avenue.

Recreation Director Eric Gay said he believes this year’s event will be the biggest one yet.

“It’s one of my favorite days of the year,” Gay said. “Being able to keep it a free event is the most important to me. That’s why I can’t thank the sponsors enough for this, for everything that they do.”

Belmont County Tourism, Hightower Brewing Co., Riesbeck’s Food Mart and Unified Bank are the sponsors for this year’s Community Day.

Gay added that the Matt VanFossen Band and Radio Tokyo will be supplying the music starting at 5 p.m. and ending when it is dark enough for the fireworks to begin.

“There’s two really good bands that are going to be on stage. We’ll have inflatables for the kids, there’s water that’s going to be given out because it’s going to be hot, and a foam party for whoever wants to go,” he said.

Gay laughed, saying that he keeps saying that the foam party is for the kids but adults are more than welcome to participate in the foam party as well.

He reiterated that it is crucial to him to always allow this event to be completely free for residents.

“A lot of times events like these will have parking fees or some kind of admission fee, but you can literally come here, have a great time and spend zero dollars if you want to. So that is very, very important to me with this event and all the events that we do,” Gay said. “I’ve lived in St Clairsville my entire life, and the community itself is so important to me. And to see the city doing these things and being a part of it is important to me.”

He added that another cool aspect of hosting the Community Day event is that it provides him the opportunity to see people who have moved away but are back home for Independence Day.

“It’s happened every year that I’ve run into somebody here that I haven’t seen since high school. It’s a great get-together, and to see all of the families having a good time makes it a really a special event for us,” Gay said.

In addition to the live music, inflatables, foam party and fireworks, the event will also have various food trucks, a beer garden and local vendors selling their products.

“It’s really one of my favorite events that we have every year. And it’s a nice mid summer thing that we do and a lot of work goes into it,” he said.

He then thanked his staff at the rec center as well as Mayor Kathryn Thalman and the city council for helping to organize and execute the event without a hitch each year.

“​​I can’t stress the team’s effort on everything enough. That’s why a lot of good things are happening in the city right now, because of everybody working together and everybody on the same page,” he said. “It’s really refreshing.”