Saratoga News

Everyone loves a parade, so Saratoga's will return

Community support brings back event on October 4

By Sarah Lombardo

The Saratoga Community Parade, absent from Saratoga streets last year, is scheduled to return Sunday, Oct. 4, according to parade co-chairman Warren Lampshire.

The event has been held periodically over the years and eventually was dubbed the Community Parade. It began as an annual event in 1995 but was canceled last year when city budget cuts left the parade without sufficient funding. Almost a year ago, Recreation Department director Joan Pisani recommended the parade be cut from the list of city-funded events, along with the teen music festival and teen trips, when she was directed by the City Council to substantially reduce her budget. Lampshire, chairman of the 1995 and 1996 parades, said he received a number of calls last year from residents wondering what had happened.

This year, he said, there was enough support and demand to form a committee and begin plans to resurrect the event, with or without city funding.

In addition to community interest in the parade itself, spurring on the quest to bring the event back was the news that a contingent from Saratoga's sister city in Moku-shi, Japan, wanted to visit Saratoga next year to celebrate the 15th anniversary of the sister-city relationship between the two cities--and they asked to be in the parade.

"This was one of the items that encouraged us to have one in 1998," Lampshire said.

Members of the committee first announced that they planned to bring back the parade in a December report to the City Council. At that time, the city pledged its co-sponsorship of the event, and councilmembers said funding would be offered if available. Also sponsoring the parade will be the Saratoga Rotary Club.

Currently, the committee is concentrating its efforts on raising money for the event. According to Lampshire, the estimated cost for staging the parade is between $8,000 and $8,500. "It takes a lot of money to run a parade," he said. "It takes substantial money."

The budget, however, includes the cost of providing trophies or monetary winnings to bands entered in the parade. In 1996, the Saratoga High School, Redwood Middle School, Andrew Hill High School, Cupertino High School, Homestead High School, Los Gatos High School and Saratoga Community bands were among the 2,600 entrants in the parade. The Santa Clara County Sheriff's Department's mounted color guard and the American Civil War Association also participated.

The cost also includes supplies, such as sodas, that will be sold by the city's Youth Commission and Saratoga High School's Interact Club. The teens in the groups sell the items and are allowed to keep the proceeds, after costs for the items are covered.

The teen groups are the only ones allowed to sell at the event, Lampshire said, despite the many calls the parade committee received in the past from vendors wanting to get in on the event. "We as a committee have always tried to protect and eliminate the event from outside vendors," Lampshire said. "It's a community parade and, of course, we try to keep it community-oriented."

Although a theme has not yet been chosen for the 1998 Saratoga Community Parade, the committee does have a Web site, at www.saratoga-ca.com/parade. The committee can also be reached by email at parade@saratoga-ca.com.

[ Back to Contents Page | Saratoga News Home Page | Archives ]