SAN MARCOS — The future of the popular San Marcos Holiday Parade is up in the air after financial challenges led the Kiwanis Club of Lake San Marcos to inform the city it can no longer organize the annual event.
Nikki Matosian, a spokesperson for the City of San Marcos, said that while no final decision has been made on whether the parade will take place, staff is well aware of the urgency of bringing on a new organizer and sponsors before the parade’s traditional date on the first Sunday of December.
The city is continuing to meet with other organizations in hopes of finding a new organizer and reaching a decision soon, Matosian said.
Originally founded more than 30 years ago by the Kiwanis Club of San Marcos, the parade has been held on the first Sunday of December every year since at least 1996, except for 2020 and 2021, when it was canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Two years ago the city decided, after looking at their budget issues, that they could no longer cover the in-kind fees they had been covering,” said Carrie Clevers, a longtime Kiwanis parade organizer. “For many years, the city did pick up the band stipends of $3,000. First, they told us they could no longer do that. And by the way, they could no longer cover the highway safety fee, which was $7,000.
Clevers explained that the club added $11,000 in expenses to its budget last year — although the city did end up covering some of the 2025 fees with the understanding that it would be unable to do so this year.
“We ended up with an anticipated budget of $33,000. And then we had a meeting with city staff and representatives from different organizations the year before last. The city polled different organizations to see how we could accomplish the funding issue we were now facing. The different organizations all said ‘We’ll help any way we can.’ The city staff really worked hard connecting different businesses in the community with the information that we needed funds for the parade. Different businesses donated different amounts, from $100 to $500 to $1,000.”
“(County Supervisor) Jim Desmond’s office gave us a neighborhood grant of $15,000, and that’s how we covered the parade last year.
“The problem is we can’t expect a $15,000 grant from the county every year, and beating the bushes for these funds every year was insurmountable.
“We notified the city in April that we could not run the parade any longer. The city came back in June, saying the City Council really wanted the parade to continue, and had found some funds. They would cover part of it to encourage us to do it another year to give them more time to find a replacement.”
But with the Kiwanis’ primary community service project being its annual scholarship fund, which awards tuition assistance to graduating high school seniors in San Marcos, Clevers said the club simply lacked the bandwidth to also raise funds to underwrite the parade.
According to former Kiwanis Club of San Marcos President Steve Kildoo, the parade was the brainchild of the late Dennis Haynes.
“He was a banker in town and had been involved in a parade somewhere else and thought it would be good if we did it. It started out small, and really grew after Carrie got involved.”
Kildoo and Clevers both said the parade ran down Rancho Santa Fe Road for its first couple of years before moving to its current route.
Clevers said she first helped run the parade in 1998, and according to her records, the 1999 edition featured 542 participants — from antique cars to Boy Scout and Girl Scout units to the San Marcos High School marching band.
Last year’s event drew 1,250 participants in the parade itself, with thousands more lining the route along Mission Avenue from Palomar College east to the transit center at San Marcos Boulevard. With the Kiwanis’ service focus on literacy, every child lining the parade route receives a free new book from “Captain Book” — a Kiwanis member dressed as a pirate.
Clevers said her personal involvement stemmed from being a parent.
“When my daughter was six, she was taking baton classes at the barn when it was still where the Senior Center is now, and a parade didn’t exist in San Marcos. She had to march in the Escondido parade. So when I joined Kiwanis and I had a chance to become involved, I did so because I thought families in San Marcos should have a San Marcos parade.”
When she totals the hours spent filing permit applications, meeting with the city, Sheriff’s Department and North County Transit District, reaching out to the previous year’s entrants and then organizing the setup for the day of the parade, Clevers said it amounts to about 100 hours of labor on her part.
In 2018, the Kiwanis Club of San Marcos had shrunk in membership to the point that it was folded back into the Lake San Marcos club, which had originally spun it off. The Kiwanis Club of Lake San Marcos then ran the parade through last year.
Kildoo, who is now active in Rotary and is a member of the city Planning Commission, said that even though his own involvement with the parade ended in 2017, he hopes it can continue.
“I thought it had value. The crowds were always substantial, the kids all loved it. We had the perfect route for it along where kids live and can come watch it.”
Editor’s note: Reporter Jim Trageser is a former member of both the San Marcos Kiwanis Club and the Lake San Marcos Kiwanis Club, and was Captain Book for two years.
