Social media was abuzz this weekend with citizens expressing concern about the likelihood of the Santa Claus parade in Kingsville taking place. This followed a post by the Windsor Parade Corporation expressing remorse about their decision to pull out of planning the event.
The Santa Claus parade is a favourite of many local citizens, young and old. Even under the duress of COVID-19 last year, Kingsville did its best and, while the results were a bit bumpy, managed to pull together a reverse parade event to keep the kids entertained and excited about the upcoming visit of the jolly man in the red suit.
And this year, while cities and towns across Ontario have been grappling with the decision of holding their own parades, Kingsville was on course to move forward with bringing Old Saint Nick back to town, once again under the management of the Windsor Parade Corporation. WPC has held the contract for delivering this event in Kingsville for the last 12 years and appeared to be ready to work with the Town again this year until the contract negotiations appeared to go off the rails.
Having already signed its parade agreement with several municipalities in the area, WPC claims it ran into some unusual challenges when negotiations began with the Town of Kingsville.
The Windsor Parade Corporation is a non-profit organization run by volunteers who give hours of their personal time to make sure parades in Windsor and Essex County come together. Negotiated rates with local municipalities are used to offset direct costs related to the planning and delivery of the parade. The Town of Kingsville had already set aside a budget of $12K which was the same amount as the previous year for the management of this event.
According to Jeremy Pillon, Chairman of the Board of the WPC, the process of negotiating and contracting with the Town previously was quite simple and usually took the form of a one-page agreement. WPC was contacted by the Town Administration in February and asked to save the date of November 20 for the parade. WPC then went to work on initial planning.
However, by July WPC sent a letter to Kingsville’s Town Council advising the Mayor and Councillors that they could not continue with the new contracting processes being proposed, which Pillon felt were unnecessarily complicated and unclear in parts.
Pillon went on to say that Mayor Nelson Santos listened to his concerns and assured him that it was a misunderstanding, and encouraged him to stay the course.
After attending a Festival of Lights Committee meeting and receiving assurances that there were no changes to procedures or expectations, Pillon was surprised when he was asked again to adapt to the new processes, a request which was aggravated by very short turnaround times for their delivery.
In addition to the increased complexity of the contracting processes, the negotiations with the Town Administration started late and there was mounting pressure on WPC to deliver their completed SERT application in less than a week with no contract in place. SERT is the Special Events Resource Team/Taskforce that reviews event needs such as road closures, emergency planning, resources for municipal property or staff coordination, fire, police and EMS.
Feeling that they could not deliver the required documents within this timeline, WPC made the painful decision to pull out of the event this year in Kingsville and notified the Town Administration of their decision via email on Thursday, September 30.
As Mayor Nelson Santos pointed out, time was not working in anyone’s favour this year. “As we began discussing this months ago, it was still unclear whether WPC was going to be able to run a parade because of health unit and provincial regulations that restricted such public events and gatherings,” he said.
“Only more recently did this picture clear up. In August, the committee welcomed Jeremy as a delegation where we further discussed the situation and came to the desire to work on a new contract for this year with an effort to recognize the potential of a sudden cancellation. We respectfully agreed that we would work on this but time was not on our side and some delays created even more of a time crunch which culminated in the decision posted by WPC on Friday.”
While the timelines were short, Mayor Santos felt that there was still the possibility of meeting the deadline for the October 12 Council report. However, he did recognize that the amount of work that goes into planning the parade is great and the fact the Kingsville’s Santa Claus parade in one of the earliest in the municipalities leaves planners with less time to prepare and deliver a memorable event for our families.
When asked what he felt was at the root of the problem, Pillon stated, “In my opinion there is a clear disconnect between the will of the politicians and committees and the processes and attitudes of the administration. The disconnect leads to the kinds of policy changes and contract terms being asked for that make it impossible for our small group of volunteers to proceed.”
Harold Remark, one of several long-time private sponsors of the event, questioned the need to complicate the contracting process when he asked “If it ain’t broke, why fix it?” Remark is anxious to see the event back on track so Kingsville’s kids won’t be left without a parade.
However, Mayor Santos believes citizens should take heart. He remains confident that our town will work to present a great event for the children in spite of these last-minute challenges.
When asked what comes next, he said, “Kingsville is a most resilient community and part of our strength has always been centred on the community response in times of need as well as in times of celebration. I can reassure our community that plans with the Fantasy of Lights Committee and volunteers will continue to pursue a Santa Claus Parade this year. While it will not be with the WPC this year, it will be a community based effort just as it was initially prior to the last 13 years.”
Confident that the parade will go forward, Councillor Tony Gaffan who is also the Chairman of the Festival of Lights Committee, would like to inform citizens that this year’s theme is “What Does Christmas Mean to Me?” Going by last year’s parade attendance, it appears that Christmas means a lot to citizens of Kingsville and those attending this year would be wise to find their way to the parade route early!
Image by QueenCarolyn from Pixabay