Notice something missing from Lilac Parade? No OT money, no fire trucks

Marching bands? Check. Guy on stilts? Check. Fire engines? Not this year.

To the surprise of some spectators, Lombard's recent Lilac Parade was fire engine-less this year, another casualty of municipal belt-tightening.

Village Manager David Hulseberg said "this is not the time" to be paying firefighters overtime to drive the trucks in the 2½-hour parade.

In previous years, the village paid about $500 in overtime and also picked up the $800 tab for a post-parade picnic for firefighters from Lombard and neighboring communities who also participated in the parade.

"Is it right to pay somebody time and a half to be in a parade? I just can't justify it in my mind," Hulseberg said.

One Lombard firefighter volunteered to do it without pay, but three people are needed to staff an engine or truck in a parade, Hulseberg said.

The village also is pulling the plug on overtime pay for firefighters to participate in Fourth of July parades in Villa Park, Wheaton and Downers Grove, Hulseberg said.

He said most village residents probably were not aware firefighters get overtime pay for the Lilac Parade.

Some other towns use on-duty firefighters in parades. Aurora, for example, will have fire trucks manned by on-duty firefighters in its Memorial Day parade May 31. The parade is staged so the engines can exit easily in an emergency, said Sanura Young, Aurora's special events coordinator.

"We don't have any experience with doing that," Hulseberg said, adding "maybe it's an idea we can revisit."

Hulseberg also recently rejected a request to take a ladder truck or engine to a funeral for a firefighter in Homewood. "It's really too far," he said. "To take a half-million-plus dollar vehicle and send it away for the day doesn't make sense to me."

If the funeral was for a firefighter in a neighboring community, he said, the answer would have been different.