Hudson parade planning changes hands
For the last nine years, by the time September rolled around, planning for the Hudson St. Patrick’s Day Parade was underway. Marching bands were being contacted and the process to select the parade’s Chief Reviewing Officer, Grand Marshal, Irishman of the Year and the Queen and her court was gearing up.
This year will be different.
The parade’s executive committee resigned en masse, last month, leaving residents questioning the future of the popular event that has consistently drawn big crowds.
The resignation letter, dated Aug. 7, read in part, “the town administration’s new governance policy made this year’s event unreasonably difficult for a volunteer group.”
“We found that (Mayor Jamie Nicholls) was hard to work with,” former executive committee member and local businessman Jim Beauchamp told a reporter. “It was an event run by volunteers. The town was trying to take over. We’re busy people, doing it for the love of the community and we were being treated like second-class citizens.”
The big change that threw a wrench into the relationship between the town and the volunteer committee was the adoption of a new policy that required all notfor-profit organizations subsidized with public funds to become formally incorporated. The town donated $10,000 to the Hudson parade organizing committee to produce the parade and related events.
“We never had any doubts that (the organizing committee) was handling the funds properly,” Nicholls said. “But when taxpayers are paying for something, there should be (formal) accountability.”
Beauchamp said the animosity between the town and the parade organizing committee had reached such a pitch, that a mere two months before the 2018 parade, it looked like the event would be cancelled.
“Imagine, two weeks before the parade, they tried to change the route,” he said. “It had become a chore, not a celebration.”
Beauchamp said the committee began inquiring about the future of the 2019 parade three months ago, but didn’t hear back.
“People were calling us to ask what’s happening,” he said. “We needed to reserve the bands well in advance and reserve the dates for the (related) events.”
In the end, the parade will go on. A newly formed cultural council, composed of eight people representing different cultural sectors, plus two town councillors will manage the parade moving forward. The committee will meet for the first time in the near future.
Beauchamps said he wants the parade to continue “for 100 years.”
“I just don’t have the will to do it anymore,” he said. “But we want to send out a press release to let people know what’s going on. I didn’t want people to think that because I walked away, the parade was going to be cancelled.”
Nicholls said he is sorry to hear that the volunteer organizing committee felt like it was being treated badly.
“When you put your heart and soul into something and then feel like you’re being treated like a second-class citizen, it’s not good,” Nicholls said. “They did a great job. But when it comes to handling public funds, we have to do it by the letter.”
The committee has returned the subsidy it had banked for the 2019 parade.