Public safety concerns have Black Diamond staff and administration talking about altering the Diamond Valley parade route.
Black Diamond Town council will discuss how to address parking issues, ignored signage and abusive language at barricades during its next committee of the whole meeting. The parade drew an estimated 4,000 viewers in its 46th year last month.
“Visitors are having trouble finding a spot to park and there is a certain level of frustration along with that,” David Petrovich, Black Diamond’s economic development and events coordinator, told council last week. “This year our tow-away signs were completely ignored, especially along First Street NE. There were too many vehicles to even possibly consider towing. They just started parking and ignoring the signage. The reason for it is there was nowhere to park. All around town people were having difficulty parking.”
The Town hired a security company to man the barricades after several volunteers backed out, worried that increasingly frustrated motorists could resort to threatening with weapons, Petrovich said.
“The amount of abuse the volunteers are taking at the barricades is quite unacceptable,” he said. “We’ve had many incidents where after much abuse a volunteer will call in and ask for support.”
Petrovich said more municipalities are hiring security companies to man barricades during their parades.
“What we found is that was very effective,” he said. “They were in uniforms and they were very good at maintaining the barricades.”
Petrovich suggested the Town continue to hire security companies in future years, adding it would cost $5,000 to $7,000 each year. The Town budgeted $11,500 for this year’s parade.
As for changing the parade route, which has been in place for six years, Petrovich said administration and a councilor met recently to discuss ways to improve parking, decrease barricades, prevent motorists from getting locked into residential areas and create safe muster points for floats, horses and walkers in the parade.
Petrovich said they suggested shortening the route to avoid the four-way stop and not go as far west on Highway 22. He said this will allow for more parking and better access for motorists in the north and west ends of town.
“We are trying to get some traffic flow into areas that normally would be inaccessible in town,” he said. “This is one idea - the one we felt that may have the best benefit and avoid the most difficulties.”
Petrovich said the disadvantage to bypassing the four-way stop is the parade would no longer pass several downtown businesses, which rely on the parade for business, but that could be rectified by encouraging merchants to host events.
Mayor Sharlene Brown said she would like to explore other possible routes at council’s committee of the whole meeting in September.
“We need to have further conversation on what we can do,” she said. “We’re in a town of 2,500 people and we have to hire security? That’s very disappointing that we cannot have the volunteer capacity to manage barricades at the parade.”
Joanne Irwin, Black Diamond’s chief administrative officer, said the Town receives several complaints about the barricades during the parade.
“We got a lot of complaints from people in the north part of town, very verbal, that they can’t get out,” she said. “The idea of opening up the north is great because it allows people to park on those streets.”
Irwin suggested the Town also gather public input on altering the parade route via an online survey and contact downtown businesses to get their input on possible solutions.
