Parade of Lights – Political Float BAN

I knew about this before last Friday’s Parade of Lights, but I didn’t want to spoil the parade for mayoral candidate David Z.

At first David was told he couldn’t put his ‘David Z’ for mayor car in the parade because the Parade of Lights has a ban on ‘political’ floats, you know, because of all that ‘family crap’ event (God forbid we expose the youngsters to politics), never mind all the commercialization of Christmas which turns a knot in my stomach more than any political candidate waving from a car.

David was allowed to be in the parade, but he had to ‘cover’ the ‘for mayor’ lettering on his car. David covered it so it said, ‘David Z as honest as Abe Lincoln’ and dressed himself in a holiday lighted version as America’s greatest president. Good for David, he rolled with it, I would not have.

Besides the fact that thousands of tax dollars are being spent on the winter wonderland (putting a private charity fundraiser out of business at Yankton Trail Park) and the fact that over a dozen of public works vehicles were featured in the parade. And most importantly DTSF receives property tax money for operational costs.

The Brookings Parade of Lights does not have a political float ban. So why does Sioux Falls?

We are constantly asking why we have such low voter turnout in municipal elections, well one of those reasons is that the city spends very little money promoting city elections. Organizations like DTSF doesn’t have a problem with TAKING our tax dollars, they just don’t want us to have a conversation about the politics in this community, they just want our money.

DTSF needs to END the political float ban, simply for the fact they receive public funding. If they want to keep their archaic rule about the ban, fine, we can take their public funding away and move the Parade of Lights to circle the Top Hat and Sunshine foods like the Zombie Walk parade.