Lancaster Elks Keep Santa Afloat as Budget Cuts Take Wind Out of His Sails : Christmas: City officials canceled St. Nick’s traditional rounds, but the lodge plans to host a holiday party ‘for the kids.’

In Lancaster this holiday season, the Elks are rushing in where city-appointed reindeer have failed to tread.

Bowing to a budget Grinch, Lancaster city officials earlier this year were forced to jettison the annual Santa’s Float Tour, which sent Kris Kringle riding through town for a week dispensing merriment and candy canes from a flatbed trunk, complete with plywood reindeer. Officials said the evening tradition’s $10,000 price tag proved too hefty even for St. Nicholas in these recessionary times.

But Monday, Lancaster Elks Lodge 1625 said it would open its parking lot to a visit by Santa Claus sometime this week, after a local radio show broadcast the news of the float tour’s demise Monday morning.

“We’re going to let the kids have something,” said Dominic Rotell, chairman of the lodge’s board of trustees, “because they want to see Santa Claus.”

Elks officials were spurred to action after KUTY-AM personality Herb Nero devoted nearly his entire three-hour morning talk show to the subject of the tour’s cancellation. During the Palmdale-based broadcast, Nero said, several outraged listeners called and said they hoped something could still be done for the youngsters.

“It’s been a rotten year, and this was another slap in the face . . . for the kids,” Nero said.

That’s when Elks officials leaped in, Rotell said, offering their parking lot at 240 E. Ave. K for a meet-Santa-and-eat-sweets fete Wednesday evening. Residents have already begun donating candy and offering to be elves and helpers at the event, organizers said. The starting time is yet to be decided but organizers said it would go on until the last child had a chance to meet Santa.

Lancaster officials welcomed the effort.

“It sounds like a good idea to us, because it’s one more chance for the children to visit Santa,” Assistant City Manager Dennis Davenport said.

The city, which crossed the float tour off its Christmas list when the city’s $27-million programs budget was passed last June, had tried to compensate by expanding its annual Breakfast With Santa event this past weekend at Lancaster City Park. But attendance at the $4-a-plate meal was lower than last year.

Meanwhile, Nero said, he will play the grand old man during the Elks Lodge parking lot visitation. “I’ve always wanted to be Santa Claus,” he said. “My only demand of the evening is that I have to sit on a throne.”