City to discuss allowing SCV holiday parade

The Santa Clarita City Council is expected next week to discuss the possibility of the city’s annual Fourth of July parade, a tradition that involves an annual attendance between 15,000 and 20,000 people a year.

The parade falls on the exact date that L.A. County announced Tuesday would be the target goal for a

countywide reopening. However, the possibility of having a large gathering in public remains uncertain.

“I’ve asked the city manager to put it on next week’s agenda,” said Councilwoman Laurene Weste, who’s also a volunteer on the Fourth of July parade organization committee. “Right now, there is extreme concern about aggregating large groups of people.”

Pressing for the parade

Weste said she was pressing for this year’s parade because it would, in part, commemorate the 75th anniversary of the end of World War II, as well as give the community a chance to celebrate front-line health care workers.

“We don’t have a lot of our wonderful World War II veterans left, but I want to make sure we acknowledge the veterans and our service personnel.”

“The parade is one of our most important things,” she added, “so we’ll talk about what that looks like.”

The parade’s organizing committee began working on the day’s events, as it normally does, beginning in January, but then the stay-at-home orders threw a wrench in the committee’s ability to continue organizing as normal, Weste said.

Variables to consider

Weste said the committee would ideally like to move forward with the parade, but there are a number of variables to consider, such as how the city will handle crowd control, with the help of the Sheriff’s Department, along the parade’s route.

“The city is under all of the mandates,” Weste said, adding the decision would stem from how the county decides to move forward in regard to large public gatherings.

“We just want to make sure that we celebrate in some way,” Weste added.

The next Santa Clarita City Council meeting is scheduled May 26.