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As a reminder, to all of those who forget the history behind the
sun-setting of the Veterans Day Parade in Lake Worth--
We used to partner with the
Chamber of Commerce on events, an
organization whose goal was making money. Back then Tom
Ramiccio was president of the Chamber. The Veterans Day Parade did not
generate any special revenue--there were no booths set up at Bryant Park
or festival fees to be made from Vets events. Nothing but hard costs
were attached to the Veterans parade, costs that could not be reduced
because the majority were overtime costs. We always have our parades on Saturday (as an example, this year our Holiday parade is on Saturday December 13th to correspond to the merchant's sidewalk sale--$$$ again) regardless of the actual event day and we have to pay PBSO and other city departments for services.
As the Chamber's number one goal was to make money, the 2007 commission instigated by Commissioners Retha Lowe, Dave Vespo and former mayor Jeff Clemens, weighed the costs and the barrage of negative propaganda from the Chamber as neither were making any money on the Veterans parade. They then decided to sunset the parade by the end of
the fiscal year, September 30, 2007 and add the Hispanic Fest, an event
that would generate plenty of revenue. (There are some Vets to this day who have not forgotten what they did). Clemens has since apologized for that decision for
sacrificing a special day for Veteran's, recognized as a national
holiday, in order to make money on a different event. It had nothing to do with recognizing the Hispanic population in our city or even ignoring Veterans. It was all about money. The commission did forget, however, that Veterans Day is largely intended to thank LIVING veterans for
dedicated and loyal service to their country and how much we appreciate their sacrifices.
We now have broken away from partnering with the Chamber of Commerce who bought the building at 501 Lake Avenue in June, 2005 from Arnold Greene for $525,000. Through the years, taxpayers gave the Chamber plenty of money to run Evening on the Avenues and other events. Now we won't have to worry about ignoring our Veterans or depending on the Chamber of Commerce. Honor, spirituality and being thankful are far more important than just making money. Our Vets didn't care about money when they put themselves in harms' way for us.
5 comments:
This was written to counter the implication that it was a recent commission that ended the Veterans Day Parade, when in fact it was over 7 years ago. This commission as well as the local newspaper like to blame certain people for rainy days.
You're right. It's the same people. Last time around they wanted 64 million of our money. What an extreme.
Based on the turn out for this year's veteran's day parade, it probably makes sense to assess whether it makes sense to hold it.
The turn out was dismal and while I don't know how much it costs for all the road closure and police presence there probably should be a review of whether these events makes sense or not.
I really believe there are some who are arbitrary just to be arbitrary. Unbelievable comment. Are you for real?
Why shouldn't there be an assessment of each event, costs, turn out, value to the community, etc.
Our city is utterly broke, putting on events with a poor turn out is a waste of our meager resources. We would be much better putting money for poorly attended public events into code enforcement where it could be better used.
Put aside the fact that this was a Veteran's day parade and just assess it as budgetary expense.
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