{"id":41970,"date":"2026-11-07T10:55:47","date_gmt":"2026-11-07T15:55:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wzbd.com\/?p=41970"},"modified":"2026-11-07T10:55:48","modified_gmt":"2026-11-07T15:55:48","slug":"mayor-again-has-praise-for-parades-safety","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wzbd.com\/index.php\/2026\/11\/07\/mayor-again-has-praise-for-parades-safety\/","title":{"rendered":"Mayor again has praise for parade’s safety"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

By BOB SHRALUKA<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

WZBD.com<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Decatur Mayor Dan Rickord, who pushed hard to bring greater safety to the city’s annual Callithumpian Parade, expressed at the latest city council meeting his appreciation to all involved this year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThanks goes to everyone who helped in any way with the parade, the volunteers, everyone \u2013 everyone who wanted this to be a safe parade,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cEveryone wanted to be on the same page \u2026 and it really worked.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The mayor pointed to the cooperation from youngsters. \u201cThe kids listened well; I think a lot of that had to do with the school (announcements),\u201d he said \u201cAnd all the people who attended cooperated.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Last year’s parade was acknowledged by Rickord and Police Chief Kevin Gerber to be a \u201cchaotic\u201d event. The former said afterward that changes would be made.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Those changes involved the placing of orange and blue traffic cones along both sides of the parade route, spaced some 20 feet apart and placed two feet off the curb.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Parade-goers were instructed to stay behind the cones and those handing out candy were told to get it inside the cones.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A group of people who volunteered walked the streets, helping monitor the safety measures and offering assistance if requested.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Given ideal weather, the parade \u2013 which began in 1914 \u2013 drew one of the largest crowds ever.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

\u201cPeople who were in the parade said it (keeping youngsters and adults out of the streets) was the best they had ever seen,\u201d the mayor said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201c It was very safe \u2013 so thank you to everyone!\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By BOB SHRALUKA WZBD.com Decatur Mayor Dan Rickord, who pushed hard to bring greater safety to the city’s<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":41971,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_hide_featured_image":false,"_jetpack_featured_image_duplicate_dismissed":0,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[5],"tags":[14,15,21],"class_list":["post-41970","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-decatur","tag-featured","tag-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/wzbd.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/11\/Parade-cones.jpg?fit=1294%2C652&ssl=1","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wzbd.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41970","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wzbd.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wzbd.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wzbd.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wzbd.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41970"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/wzbd.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41970\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":41974,"href":"https:\/\/wzbd.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41970\/revisions\/41974"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wzbd.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/41971"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wzbd.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41970"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wzbd.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=41970"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wzbd.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41970"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}