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Agencies Shuffle To Make Room For Rescheduled Santa Parade
< < Back to agencies-shuffle-make-room-rescheduled-santa-paradeOn Dec. 6, for the first time in memory, the Logan-Hocking Chamber of Commerce cancelled the Logan Santa Parade due to the weather.
No rainy-day date had been established, and initially Logan-Hocking Chamber of Commerce Director Bill Rinehart reported that it would not be rescheduled.
The public outcry regarding that decision was deafening, and quickly changed the minds of those who were organizing the parade.
“I wanted it rescheduled, period,” said Christy Bosch, Chairman of the Christmas Parade Committee with the Chamber of Commerce. “The kids have worked very, very hard on these floats, and I think kids really look forward to seeing Santa, and I just wanted to make sure that Logan still had a Christmas Parade, and I think the entire committee felt the same way.”
Bosch is unsure why there has never been a backup date scheduled for the parade, but advised that because of the sheer number of participants, it wasn’t an option to reschedule it for the next day. She also felt that pushing it back any further would be too late, and so the parade was rescheduled despite the many activities that are already scheduled for Dec. 13.
“There are a lot of activities that go on at this time of the year, and there needs to be better communication amongst organizations as to when they’re planning to do something,” said Logan City Mayor Martin Irvine. “We’ll make sure the parade will take place, but the organization has to do a better job of communicating with us.”
There are many activities that were already scheduled for this Saturday, such as the Logan Police Department’s Shop-With-A-Cop event, which is scheduled from 9 a.m. till approximately noon. According to Logan Police Capt. Scott Mingus, the department will start deploying units for the parade around 1:30 p.m., so they hope that the two events will not conflict with each other.
“We’re adaptable,” said Mingus. “As an agency, things happen and we obviously can’t see in advance that something is going to happen, so when it does we adapt and take care of it.”
According to Mingus, the LPD was able to contact the officers who were on call last Saturday to let them know about the change, and now with the exception of a couple of officers with previous time-off requests, the department is on-call for Dec. 13.
The Logan Archery Team is also scheduled to compete in the Fairfield Christian Shoot in Lancaster on Saturday. This is a mandatory competition for tryouts to make the Logan team. The rescheduling of the parade put several middle school archers in a predicament because some of them are also in the band, and thus required to march in the parade. The children would have been forced to choose between marching for a grade and shooting to make the team.
Thankfully, the Logan coaches have been very accommodating of the changes, and reported on Facebook that the Fairfield Christian Academy has been good about working with them to try to schedule any band kids early in the shoot. That way, they will be able to make it back to Logan for the parade and won’t have to choose between their grade being docked and being on the team.
Jeff North, Head Director for the Logan Marching Chieftain Band also understands that the rescheduled date will be impossible for some students for various reasons, stating that when Mother Nature intervenes, children with prior commitments will be excused. Students unable to attend must communicate the conflict with the appropriate group leaders prior to the scheduled event.
“One of the things that we will be reviewing is that we’re going to be looking at the pros and cons of when we were setting this up for this year, and trying to adjust so that we can make it better for the future knowing that it did have some negative impacts on some of those organizations,” said Bosch. “So we will certainly try to not let this happen in the future.”
Editor’s note: Teresa Salizzoni also contributed to this story.