Therefore our city manager will not be multitasking this year as he serves on the Tournament of Roses Committee.

Where we screwed up is not starting early with a non-profit group working together to raise funds throughout the year. It was only after I started hammering our city that any attempt was made to attract outside support.

However, I do have a bit of a quibble in that I disagree about cities spending money on these extravagances at all. I find it really hard to see how a float in the parade raises a city’s visibility very much, or how the benefit of said exposure could be measured against the cost (i.e. TOT increase vs. outlay).

In any case, the cost of these things should be covered by private donations by idividuals, civic clubs, chambers of commerce, and volunteer labor.

Let me explain what led to this series. Residents of Mission Viejo were kept in the dark on our decision to even enter a float. I won’t devote time to that debate here.

While the bedroom community of Mission Viejo spent over $300,000 for our float the city of Anaheim invested $150,000 to promote their major convention center. They also have the Honda Center (formerly Arrowhead Pond), Downtown Disney, Disneyland and all of the hotels that generate a chunk of bed taxes for their General fund. How about Anaheim’s $80 million in TOT while the city of Mission Viejo’s TOT was $575,000 last year. I support that use of taxpayer funds and have told mayor Pringle of said support.

Sierra Madre. “We are a non-profit, all volunteer organization dedicated to entering a float in the annual Pasadena Tournament of Roses Parade. We are a totally “Self-Built” float–we design, construct, decorate and raise the necessary funds to produce our float every year. Funding is achieved through memberships and local fundraising activities.” Gilbert comment Fantastic example by a city of 11,000 residents.

City of Long Beach. City cap for the float cost was $115,000. They are promoting the Aquarium of the Pacific, the Queen Mary,their Convention Center and the Long Beach Grand Prix. Good value and justified expenditure.

The city of Burbank’s float had a budget of $67,500. They depend extensively on volunteers and use their city yards for the construction.

One city that participated in 2008, Sante
Fe Springs, elected not to exhibit.I contacted Mr. Fred Latham months ago as part of my research. The reason is simple. They were celebrating their golden anniversary in 08.
It is worth ointing out that half of their $230,000 2008 float costs were raised from private donations.

Roseville was celebrating their Centennial. I was told that their $200,000 budget was all covered by donations including penny jars distributed around the city. Trivia. 50 pounds of pennies equals $169.52 At least that is what they told me

The city of Huntington Beach budgeted $200,000 for their float. As of July 7th they had received $110,000 in contributions toward that cost. Like the city of Roseville they too were celebrating their Centennial.

La Canada-Flintridge whose “self-built”
2008 float won the award for best Animation & Motion won the same award this year. PS: Their 2009 city budget $15,000

I believe that the float representing the city of Downey is also self funded by volunteers.

What caught my attention this year was the comment that the city of LA used ZERO taxpayer money in their entry.

David. That is the core of my angst.
Perhaps you have not been following the remodel of our County Board of Supervisors offices in Santa Ana where the cost is somewhere in excess of $350,000 which has caused an uproar in that employees are being asked to take days off without pay while others are losing their jobs. Unlike thew 2009 floats which will be dismantled in a week’s time ,at least you can see the capital project investment when you visit Santa Ana.
We have residents in our city whose 401K’s are now 201 K’s. Others have lost their jobs and some have their homes in foreclosure.
We are a bedroom community of 100,000 residents. We do not even have a minor league baseball team (as we ran the Vigilantes out of town years ago).
Perhaps you can convince us that spending over $300,000 for two minutes of air time on national TV is justified. In yesterdays OC Register council member Kelley said “I think this was an opportunity to showcase our city on national TV, and I did watch coverage and felt it did a good job of covering who we are in Mission Viejo.”
I guess we are smarter than the largest cities in ourstate such as San Diego, San Francisco, Sna Jose and other who do not need to showcase their communities. Perhaps they have a better understandning on proper use of taxpayer monies when things get tight.
Let’s look at our neighbor to the north. The city of Irvine who planned to see thousands of new homes constructed on the closed MCAS military base. Having thousands of homes to be sold why didn’t they enter a float?
One last point that I made to the Register reporter that apears in that same story. While I do not believe it is appropriate to be giving employees a raise in this recession, and knowing that our coffers will be $2 million short this year, on Monday our council will vote to reduce a pending increase to all city employees shaving somewhere over $200,000 from that promise.
Money well spent???????????????????
I await your reply.

In the sun we were so hot working on the float this week up in Irwindale that it would have felt GREAT to take a quick dip in the float’s pool (but alas, it was not filled until Dec. 31st!).

If anyone else missed the Marines marching band, try to watch KTLA’s re-broadcast. Not only were they shown, but Bob Eubanks made a nice comment about them as they played and marched past the tv cameras.

Have a wonderful New Year’s Day. It’s warmed up to the 70s (other parts of the country would love to be here today) — nice day to go out and go for a walk, perhaps along the Oso Creek Trail so nicely portrayed on our float.

Should those young people be swimming in that water?

We shredded straw flowers, glued on various seeds and corn husks, prepared all the thousands of roses and other flowers in individual water vials, and finally placed the live flowers on the actual float.

Not only was the float beautiful, but there was a sincere spirit of friendship and camaraderie among the groups working on our float. We met as strangers, but became friends.

And you will be happy to know that it was only reclaimed, non-drinking water that was used to fill the pool.

I think it was more of a timing thing, the lake and the drought. Similar in a way to the Float and the Recession.