NEW ORLEANS (AP) — Fans of New Orleans’ Mardi Gras season can expect another year of shortened parade routes.
The Mayor’s Mardi Gras Advisory Council said Thursday that the shorter routes of 2022 will continue in 2023, The Times-Picayune/The New Orleans Advocate reported.
“Due to the manpower shortage that we’re seeing across the country within the law enforcement community, we are going to do the exact same routes that we did last year,” said James Reiss III, the advisory council’s chairman. “I will add that we’re very aware, the city is very aware, that it affects all of us individual parading krewes differently.”
The smaller police force and a shortage of other municipal workers led City Hall to cut blocks from the parades routes last year. The continuing surge of retirements and difficulty recruiting new officers has left the police department with the fewest commissioned officers in decades, leading Mayor LaToya Cantrell in August to question whether Carnival parades would even be possible in 2023, the newspaper reported.
But Carnival boosters and others noted that even though shortened routs aren’t ideal, they’re better than nothing.
“I know we don’t like the shortened routes,” Reiss said, “but if we can work independently with the NOPD to make sure that your individual krewe is doing what it needs to be doing to be safe around that route, it’s very much appreciated by the police department and by the city that we do that.”
Mardi Gras 2023’s parade season begins Jan. 6. Mardi Gras will be celebrated Feb. 21.
