The Butler Italian Festival will be back next year, and will be even bigger.

Festival organizers Sal Richetti and Rocco Lamanna spoke at Tuesday's Butler City Council meeting at the city building and said they were pleased with the success of the festival, which was held on Main Street over Labor Day weekend.

“(We) achieved first-year goals of staging a well-balanced, well-attended Italian festival in the heart of the city's downtown corridor that would have the potential to become an annual signature attraction for the county,” Richetti read from a statement.

He said if not for the rain on the Saturday of the festival, the event would have exceeded expectations for attendance. As it stands, he said the attendance — which was estimated on the last day of the event by festival co-organizer Michael Dongilli to be between 12,000 and 15,000 people — met expectations.

Richetti commended the community for its attendance and noted that there were no public safety incidents, nor were there any issues with traffic and parking.

Richetti said County Festivals LLC, which runs the festival, hopes to move the event from Labor Day weekend to the last weekend in August so it wouldn't compete with other festivals and family gatherings.

The three-day event would be Aug. 24 to 26. The times and dates would be 5 to 10 p.m. Aug. 24, noon to 10 p.m. Aug. 25 and noon to 6 p.m. Aug. 26.

Richetti said he also hopes to add more portable restrooms, more activities for attendees and more vendors.

Council was receptive to his hopes, and Mayor Tom Donaldson said during the meeting that council's aim will be to approve the changes to the festival in October.