Gulf Shores wants to be in the business of Mardi Gras parades. The city just wants out of the business of being the main organizer behind the colorful revelry of costumes, floats, throws and crowds lining State Route 59.

And, the city doesn’t care if those parades are on a Saturday night, say Jan. 23, or on Fat Tuesday at 10 a.m. like the city has seen for most of the past 47 years. Concerns recently arose when talk of a Saturday night parade began with an implication that it somehow meant the Fat Tuesday parade would go away. Not so, Mayor Robert Craft said.

“We do not want to lose it,” Craft said of the Tuesday parade, “but we're not willing to take it over and run it.”

The city is on board for the same public safety support it always had for any parades with authorization to roll in Gulf Shores during revelry season.

“We’ll provide the same safety and security with barricades and police support to one that we do to the other,” Craft said. “We're not killing the Fat Tuesday parade, but we've got to come up with a group to handle it.”

The Island Revelers came before the city twice on July 27 – first in a special-called work session to discuss parades and then in the regular session 30 minutes later – to propose its Jan. 23 parade. It was passed unanimously.

But Craft wanted to make one thing clear.

“I'll say it again: We don't want to lose Tuesday morning parade,” the mayor said at the work session. “If there's another organization that wants to have a parade similar to what these gentlemen have proposed, we welcome them. We think it'd be great if we're not taking away the Tuesday morning parade. And, I apologize for us not making that clearer from the beginning.”

What the city would love is for a second Mardi Gras group of the several in South Baldwin County to step up and take over the minutia of getting the floats signed up, lined up and ready to roll.

“We would need, like here, from a Tuesday morning planning group that was going to do what this other group was planning on doing – organizing and putting together – instead of the city trying to put together and organize this program,” Craft said.

There was a groundswell of support to keep the Fat Tuesday event during comments at the special meeting.

Mike Hawkins with the Shriners, who have participated in the parades for years, said he’d be willing to help with organization to keep the Fat Tuesday parade rolling.

“I think we can get together with the community and come up with a plan,” Hawkins told council. “I just don't know if we can get it done in the timeframe that's going to be required.”

Craft said the city is willing to listen and even help out to help make the Fat Tuesday parade happen, but another group needs to organize it.

“It makes reasonable sense to me to give you a year to get your plan together,” Craft said. “The door is wide open for negotiation with the city of how we do the Tuesday morning deal. We're wide open for that.”

Gulf Shores has been running the annual parade for about a decade with mixed results as floats registered dwindled along with crowds. A change to a beach-road parade route didn’t help, and it was abandoned after a few years for the State Route 59 route lauded by business owners on the route.

A tragic accident to start the 2017 parade left several band members injured when a driver in the parade allegedly hit the gas instead of the brakes and ran over and injured several high school band members. The parade was halted for a year but eventually returned with heightened caution for drivers and along the route.