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Coffee County Emergency Management Agency and organizers for Bonnaroo Music and Arts Festival will not hold the annual March tabletop exercise in favor of a boots-on-the ground exercise closer to the event to be the second weekend in June.

Director of EMA Allen Lendley said at a recent EMA Commission meeting that the festival’s corporate leadership recognized the expense of flying into Middle Tennessee the personnel to hold the March exercise.

Lendley said that the tabletop tests the planned responses in the event of an emergency. If there were issues with a plan, time is needed to make those plans right.

He felt that in doing tabletops for so many years, the plans are as good as they can be based on resources available.

Lendley said the logical next step is to do a functional exercise.

“Let’s take what we’ve talked about for years in theory, let’s take it out there and put it to the test,” Lendley said.

The last exercise last March involved about 75 people in the Coffee County Administrative Plaza meeting room. Public safety agency representatives, about 19 different ones from state to local, met with Bonnaroo security, medical, production and media. A scenario was suggested and the group broke off into groups to work the scenario.

“The tabletop exercises have helped up get our plans where they need to be and it also gives us the opportunity… (to network) with all the public safety personnel,” he said.

“It’s a lot better to break bread with someone and have a conversation ahead of time, than it is in (in an emergency),” Lendley said.

The added benefit to having it immediately prior to the festival allows all of the staff to attend.

“For a tabletop, we’re talking to the security contractor, not boots-on-the-ground people. They can tell us whatever. But if we do a full-scale exercise onsite, all those people are going to be in-play,” Lendley said.