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There may be less to celebrate on local streets than originally anticipated come Oct. 11 when the Columbus Day Parade does not march down Broad Street.
Last year, after announcing its cancelation due to insufficient funds, the parade was revived weeks before its scheduled Oct. 12 run, but this year’s no-go is a done deal with no chance of a second wind.
The parade was to honor Severino Verna, City Council President Anna Verna’s husband, who died in June. Verna founded the parade with former City Council President Paul D’Ortana 53 years ago.
"Basically, [organizers are] left with two options," Tony Radwanski, spokesman for Council President Verna, who has served as parade chairwoman since 1976, said, "one would be to have the parade and not have it up to the high standards that they have had. The other would be to have the festival in Marconi Plaza."
Organizers chose the latter to concentrate on obtaining enough funds for 2010. This year, almost $20,000 was raised, including $4,000 from the Department of Recreation’s Activities Fund, but the numbers fell short of the $52,000 needed for the parade as the festival typically pays for itself via sales of booth space and the like.
That $20,000 included $7,500 from The Grand Council of the Pennsylvania Order Sons of Italy in America that was approved Sept. 21 — the day before the cancelation was announced — with an additional $500 from a suburban lodge, according to a press release.
"We’re not pointing fingers at anyone. We were not offered alternatives. From what I understand, [Columbus Day Committee of Philadelphia members] just decided we weren’t having the parade," a Sons of Italy source who did not wish to be named said, adding a scaled-back parade would have been a better option.
The Sons of Italy was prepared to collect more funds for the event, but the committee made the decision to scrap the parade at its Sept. 22 meeting, according to a letter from Sons of Italy President John H. Foradora to it Grand Council.
Even without the parade, some Columbus Day activities will remain, including a proclamation honoring Severino Verna, who was the parade’s grand marshal until this year, Oct. 9 at City Hall and the Italian-American Festival noon to 6 p.m. at Marconi Plaza, Broad Street and Oregon Avenue, Oct. 11 that typically takes place after the parade.
The festival will be the same scale as in previous years, with 25 booths and string bands, Harry Crimi, owner of Cappuccio Meats, 1019 S. Ninth St., said. Crimi has organized the event for 25 years and expects the same turnout as in the past.
"I do, yes, because a lot of people come just for the food and the entertainment," he said.
The Sons of Italy state chapter, which is based in the city, will hold its banquet 6:30 to 10:30 p.m. Oct. 10 at the Regal Ballroom in the Frankford section. Ceremonies also will be held Oct. 12 at the Columbus monuments starting at Penn’s Landing before heading to Marconi Plaza.
If donations for this year’s parade were to flood in, it is still too late to revive the long-standing tradition due to arranging broadcasting with 6ABC, where the event is televised annually, and to coordinate, the string bands that routinely participate, Radwanski said.
"It would have played out the same way last year had we not gotten people involved," former Sons of Italy Executive Director Gregory Pasquale Ciminera, who left the post in the spring, said of last-minute donations that poured in for the 2008 affair.
Last September, the same ordeal occurred. Due to paperwork, the state grant was not received, but that glitch was to be fixed by the time this year’s parade rolled around. Within days of hearing the parade may be lost in a sea of red tape last year, Ciminera raised $38,000 from the community to cover the permits, string bands and entertainment at Marconi Plaza.
Ciminera believes that gap in funding rolled over to this year when the Columbus Day Committee did not submit a report to the state laying out its use of the grant money over a sampling of three years. The lack of filing prevented the group from obtaining a $40,000 grant from the Department of Community and Economic Development it had received in prior years, with the exception of last year and this year.
Committee Chairwoman Jody Della Barber could not be reached for comment by press time.
But the state grant should not have been a deterrent, Ciminera said Monday, adding he would have liked to have seen more communication and outreach to the community for funds.
"We had a parade last year with zero state dollars," he said. "We could have had one this year."
Another shortfall came in the tab the City once picked up: At the onset of the budget crisis in November, Mayor Michael Nutter announced the City would no longer provide cleanup and police protection free of cost to events.
"Even if the City waived its cost, they still couldn’t have the parade," Radwanski said, alluding to the much larger shortfall the parade committee faced.
The City’s bill, which also included police protection, cleanup and the sound system, would total $5,800, Radwanski added.
Although the tradition will be broken, efforts are already being made to make sure the parade is restored. The paperwork problem will be fixed within the coming weeks to get "forces together for an even better parade next year," Radwanski said.
Foradora is forming a committee to prevent a repeat of this year, according to a member of the organization.
"We’re going to take a bigger role next year," an unnamed source said.
Ciminera hopes the parade is able to return and this should be "a wake-up call to our Italian-American community."
"This is about Italian heritage and celebrating our traditions and it should be something that everyone participates in and I’m not sure everyone participated in the decision to cancel it," he said.
