One of two speakers of note at today’s weekly Rotary Club of West Seattle meeting was Keith Hughes, who chairs the West Seattle Grand Parade for the Rotary Service Foundation, which presents it.

This year’s parade is a little more than two months away – Saturday, July 18. The parade is almost a century old, founded in 1934 – as the Grand Parade, not the Hi-Yu Parade, Hughes noted, though it carried that name colloquially for some years. He said it’s the longest-running and largest community parade in the Puget Sound area. It’s a Seafair-sanctioned event. And – it’s increasingly expensive to present. Even with an all-volunteer parade team, it still cost $11,000 last year, more than half of that going to barricades for street closures along the California Avenue SW parade route (from Admiral Way to SW Edmunds), which the city stopped providing more than a decade ago. Now the city charges permit fees that keep going up, he added, saying last year’s permit cost $2,600. So they accept sponsorships to help cover the costs, and Hughes said there’s room for more this year. Sponsorship levels go from $250 to $5,000, and you can contact parade organizers to sign up – WestSeattleParade@gmail.com – if you’re interested in being part of the parade (which only carries a fee for commercial and political entries), you can inquire at that same email address.