Viva Oviedo! Festival gets special permit for upcoming event

An impassioned plea following months of delays and communication issues led to big changes for a major event in Oviedo.

The volunteer-run Viva Oviedo! Festival that celebrates Hispanic heritage saw thousands of people attend its inaugural event in October 2025. It’s set to take place again at Oviedo on the Park on Oct. 17. Organizers had hoped this year’s festival would be in partnership with the city, but despite having ongoing conversations with city officials since at least March, no decisions had been made until the Oct. 5 City Council meeting. 

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This led the event’s chairman of the board, Abe Lopez, and others to ask the Council to add the potential partnership to the meeting’s agenda.

“I have donated and volunteered countless hours, serving as the city’s unofficial DJ for the city’s mother-and-son dances, the father-and-daughter dances, and recently I was volun-told I need to serve as the DJ for the seniors dances that are coming up,” Lopez said at the meeting. “I bring my own equipment, I bring my lights. Hours of preparation before the event to select songs and set up. I have never once asked for a penny, even when the city charges the public to attend.

“I give gladly, but it is discouraging when our nonprofit’s own free celebration encounters additional challenges and obstacles,” he said. 

The organizers said they were hoping the event could be granted the same non-monetary benefits the city’s signature events — Cops and Cars for Kids, Taste of Oviedo and Great Day in the Country — receive. That includes the ability to place signage and banners in specific locations, have the event added to the city’s calendar and be mentioned by the city on social media, email and other alerts. Additionally, Lopez said that following the city removing the fees for taxpayer-funded facilities for this year’s event — it cost the organization $5,000 for facility rentals in 2025 — he would like that to be honored for future events.

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“If all this group wants is exactly what [the other signature events are] getting, to offer a free festival to everybody, and they don’t want a taxpayer subsidy, it costs us nothing, it costs us nothing to give this,” Oviedo Mayor Megan Sladek said at the meeting. “It gives them access to all kinds of things.”

To become a signature event in Oviedo, an event must be hosted, organized and operated by a verified nonprofit or other similar organization, be held in the incorporated city limits, be open to the general public, provide community reinvestment, make it through public safety reviews and be held on at least five separate occasions. Multiple Council members said Viva Oviedo! meets all of those requirements except the five-occasion rule. 

“We sometimes get so stuck in what the checklist says, we’re missing the intent,” Deputy Mayor Natalie Teuchert said. “I think Viva Oviedo! in their first year outperformed what everybody expected. They pulled out the whole community. This is, what I always preach is the biggest part of Oviedo, is bringing community together and making sure everybody feels accepted here.”

To make an alteration to the signature event rules, the city’s ordinances would need to be amended, which requires public hearings and a City Council vote. 

While the three official signature events do receive about $10,000 each to cover costs, including police, road closures and other city services, Viva Oviedo! is not asking for that benefit. The event raised nearly $40,000 for its 2025 event, and the event will have nearly $60,000 for this year’s, Lopez said. That money will be used for police and other security, fire and EMS, artist honorariums, transportation and hospitality for artists, marketing materials, T-shirts and meals for volunteers, and more. 

The City Council unanimously voted for a special event permit that gave all the non-monetary benefits of the signature events.

Partnership problems

The lack of an official partnership designation, however, impacts the organizers’ ability to plan future events because they cannot give vendors and artists commitments that it will be ongoing, Lopez said.

“We’re demonstrating that volunteers and private sponsors can produce a major free community festival without a city cash contribution to its production budget,” Lopez said. “With Amendment 3 putting local government spending under scrutiny, this model, you would think, should be welcomed, yet our partnership request has been pending since March.”

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They delay even bothered City Council members.

“This has been stalled out for six months,” Sladek said. “I’m really frustrated to have only learned recently that the ball was in our court for six months and we held it. That’s not a cool way to act.”

City officials said part of the delay was due to a legal review about how Florida’s DEI (Diversity, Equity and Inclusion) law, signed by Gov. Ron DeSantis in April, would impact the city’s involvement. It was recently determined that it would not have an impact.

“Fortunately, last Friday [Oct. 2] Mr. Lopez advised me that the Viva Oviedo Festival is a celebration of National Hispanic Heritage Month, a federally recognized national observance that exempts the City’s involvement with the Festival from the prohibitions of Florida’s new DEI law,” Vose said in an email to Oviedo Community News. “I discussed this matter with Mr. Lopez last Friday, and I discussed the matter with the City Council [Monday].

“There are no fundamental legal holdups stopping Viva Oviedo from holding a successful event working hand in hand with the City,” he wrote.

The city said there was “no intent to hold up the process, but we wanted clarification to the legal review prior to finalizing the partnership agreement draft,” Oviedo Recreation and Parks Director Paul Belden said in an email to OCN. “Additionally, there was not a timetable provided as to when this agreement should be constructed or finalized, other than the event organizers and the City were in agreement to work through the process. Not knowing the review timeframe, staff recommended a revision to the fee schedule, incorporating non-profit rates accordingly.

“The City has always welcomed and supported this event from the beginning and will continue to support the event into the future,” he wrote.

Lopez, however, said in a text message to OCN that on the Oct. 2 phone call with Vose, Belden and City Manager Bryan Cobb, “the City Attorney told us he had never been asked to conduct that review. Our volunteers waited months based on that explanation.

OCN reached out to Vose through the city’s Communication Department about if he was asked to give a legal opinion about whether the city and Viva Oviedo! could enter into a partnership in regard to the DEI law before the call with Lopez, Cobb and Belden, but has not received a response at the time of publication.

”We submitted our draft in March for an October 17 festival,” Lopez’s text message continued. “Council directed staff to finalize the arrangements on August 31. The festival date was never a mystery. We appreciate the nonprofit rates, but they did not complete the partnership. Our community deserves accurate information and an approved agreement on October 12.”

At the Oct. 5 meeting, the Council voted to hold a meeting on Oct. 12 to make a decision on the official partnership. 

Despite the uncertainty Lopez still feels, he said he is continuing to make final preparations for the upcoming festival.

“Our volunteers will keep preparing for Oct. 17, when we’ll once again bring Oviedo together for a world-class, privately funded festival,” he said. “We hope the city will match our commitment to getting things done.”