HOEFLICH@MYDAILYSENTINEL.COM

POMEROY – Tickets on a four-wheeler equipped with a snow plow and wench to be awarded as the grand prize in the Pomeroy Merchants Association’s annual duck derby held by the Pomeroy Merchants Association will go on sale next week.

The derby takes place during the September Sternwheel Festival.

The tickets will be for sale at several downtown businesses and in the Ohio Valley, Farmers and Peoples Banks in Pomeroy beginning Monday.

To increase participation, the Merchants this year will draw a ticket every day until the week of the Sternwheel Festival and award a prize. The grand prize four-wheeler will be awarded on Sept. 17 to the owner of the numbered duck which floats past the finish line first on the day of the derby.

Posters will be placed out in the community to show what prize is going to be awarded on each day. Dan Short, Merchants president, is chairman of the derby and proposed at this week’s meeting the possibility of dropping the ducks from the bridge and setting the finish line along the shoreline in Middleport.

Beginning next week, the four-wheeler will be on display at Mark Porter’s GMC dealership in Pomeroy. It will be moved around to different locations for display over the next several weeks.

Members commended Alice Wamsley for her work in planting and maintaining flowers in downtown Pomeroy, a part of the Merchants’ beautification program financed through the duck derby, other fund raisers, and donations.

The new downtown banners for the period light posts have not yet arrived, it was reported.