The city of Bogalusa will not fund the reviewing platform this year at the MCCA XXXVI Mardi Gras parade due to financial concerns, but that doesn’t mean there will be no platform.
MCCA captain Don Spiers said the krewe would fund the platform, as it has done on occasion in the past.

“We’re going to have a reviewing stand, which we’re putting up … across the street from Ritchie’s funeral home,” he said.

The Poole-Ritchie Funeral Home is located at 216 Alabama Ave. The parade will be Saturday, Feb. 6.

Bogalusa Mayor Wendy Perrette said the reason why the city isn’t paying for the platform is because they did not budget for it. Last year, the city spent $8,000 on a set of bleachers that acted as the platform, and she said they didn’t plan on the expense this time around.

Perrette said the city may pay for the platform next year, but it’s too early to say.

“We’ll worry about it after this parade,” she said. “Well meet again and then discuss it for next year after the parade. After the parade we’ll discuss what went wrong and what went right and what we can help with.”

The platform is not for the public, but for the king and queen and their families. Spiers said this year’s platform would be scaled back.

“It’s smaller,” he said. “We’re making it with a flatbed trailer.”

Spiers spoke on the phone Friday from Washington, D.C., where he was in the midst of celebrating Mardi Gras in the nation’s capital — an annual tradition — and also bracing for what could be the worst blizzard the area had seen in recent years.

“It’s snowing on our parade here,” he joked. “It’s supposed to be a record snowfall here in two hours.”

Spiers said residents of the city were panicking before the storm, and he recognized something familiar.

“Everyone up here is doing what we do for hurricanes down there — they’re running through the grocery store buying up flashlights and batteries and food and things,” he said.

Spiers, however, was untroubled. He said he would enjoy the rare frozen precipitation.

“I look forward to building a snowman. I don’t get to do that too much in Bogalusa,” he said.