Costs, Apathy Rain on O.C.’s Old-Fashioned Parades

The 1997 Costa Mesa--Newport Harbor Lions Club parade offered spectators an event rich with nostalgic trappings: marching bands, floats and civic leaders in classic cars cruising Harbor Boulevard enroute to a fish fry.

This year, the club will still cook the fish but the parade has stalled like a float with a flat tire.

The reason is sticker shock: $20,000 for police protection, permits, setup and cleanup and other costs was just too high.

“The money we raise goes to charity,” said Ed Hodges, vice president of the club. “What we were banking on is that the parade would bring in enough people to offset incurred costs, but it didn’t.”

From Mission Viejo to Buena Park, the modern dilemmas of cost and waning interest, have made the old-time parade a relic of a bygone era. In recent years, many in Orange County have been canceled or scaled down.

Paying for police protection and traffic control, street-cleaning and insurance can cost $10,000 to $30,000 for events that last a few hours and don’t charge admission. Sometimes cities and businesses cover costs, otherwise it’s club fund-raisers--or all three.

Fullerton canceled the city-sponsored Founders Day Parade and Street Faire in 1994 when a lack of interest from businesses and the community no longer matched the $26,000 price tag.

It was hard to justify paying police overtime to block of the streets and provide protection for an event without strong community support, said City Manager James L. Armstrong. Off-duty officers earned time-and-a-half to control traffic and keep the peace.

A brief push to bring it back in 1996 foundered. Sponsors never came forward and a city report showed a minimal contribution to the local economy.

In Mission Viejo, the luck of the Irish simply ran out for the St. Patrick’s Day parade in 1995. Even an imported Blarney stone set near Lake Mission Viejo wasn’t enough to bring back the crowds of 10,000 or more seen in the 1980s. Only 5,000 showed for the last event--this in a city of more than 80,000.

“When we first started, there were more people in the parade than watching it,” said Charlie Ware, who worked on the parade committee. “It was really fun.”

That was 1969, a year when it was easier to close down streets and Orange County sheriff’s deputies volunteered services.

In the parade’s last year, a committee ponied up $8,000 of a $20,000 goal to pay for services, but the event still fizzled.

Toward the end, even local bands, suffering the budget cuts of high school music programs, could not afford to rent buses and get insurance for the day.

“Let’s face it, bands make a parade,” Ware said.

Though some have talked of bringing it back, Marguerite Parkway will probably buzz with traffic--not tubas--next March 17.

Yet, some parades do make it, but with difficulty.

Anaheim scaled back a fall festival parade last year but the show, formally a Halloween parade, went on.

Organizers of the Tet parade in Westminster, part of Vietnamese New Year festivities, borrowed $10,000 from the city in January to cover police, public works, city staff time, and emergency services for the nine-hour event.

They pledged to repay the city in six months, causing a City Council clash and divided vote over the wisdom of allocating public funds.

“We cannot be giving public funds to a nonprofit because it sets a dangerous precedent,” Westminster City Councilwoman Margaret Shillington said before voting against it.

“It’s not our responsibility,” she continued. “If we do it for one group, we will have to start doing it for everyone.”

In other cities the precedent was long set--and hard to do away with. The Buena Park Noon Lions Club members canceled the Silverado Days Parade in 1997--after 40 years.

Lions Club members said the city asked them to cut $26,000 out of the $70,000 city allocation, largely in-kind services, such as police protection, municipal staff time and maintenance needed for the four-day event.

“We were spending about $13,000 in police and there wasn’t enough money in the budget and something had to go,” said Fred Smith, Noon Lions president.

“The city had to cut funds someplace, and that’s where we cut it.”