After a heartfelt presentation by volunteers of the Santa Claus Parade Committee, the city has decided to take responsibility for the Christmas event.
As ThoroldToday reported, volunteers organizing the parade don't want to be liable should anything go wrong.
Sebastian Soccio-Marandola and Tonya Komselen from the Santa Claus Parade committee were on hand at last night’s city council meeting to explain the committee's position.
“We’re just a group of passionate citizens that wanted to help keep the parade going and do something good for our community,” Komselen told city council members. “This means there’s a personal liability if something goes wrong. No new or old volunteers are willing to risk losing their homes or life-savings due to an unforeseen event.”
As a solution, a new City Hall report proposed a Skate with Santa and downtown lights display instead of a Santa Claus Parade this year.
"I think staff has done their due diligence here and I will support staff on this," councillor Carmen Derose told fellow councillors. "I think it will bring people downtown to actually support the BIA in stead of drawing them away from downtown. I’ve been to the parade before and I never been downtown once."
Other councillors did not agree with that sentiment.
“I go to the parade every year and I do go right down Front Street and we always buy pizza and go into the shops and do all that fun stuff,” councillor Victoria Wilson said. “Having a skate is wonderful but I don’t think it includes everybody in our community.”
Organizing the Santa Claus Parade will cost the city an additional $35,000: $15,000 for materials and services and $20,000 for staff resources to plan and operate the parade.
“I think the Santa Claus Parade is the largest all-ages community event that the City of Thorold has ever put together,” said councillor Anthony Longo. “I know it’s a budget overrun, I hate it, but I think we need to support our volunteers.”
Councillor Wilson said she believed the city would be able to raise funds for the event and Mayor Terry Ugulini agreed.
"I’m not worried about the budget overrun,” he said. “We’ll get some funding from sponsors. The two previous [events], Canada Day and 13-For-13, we got back a lot of money because of sponsorships. In fact, this money here, we got more than that from those events. That’s another reason I’m so excited. I see this as a no-brainer personally.”
And with that city council instructed City Hall to start organizing the event.
