BATON ROUGE - The Spanish Town Parade has rolled the streets of Baton Rouge for over four decades, but with the proposed 2026 city-parish budget cuts, the parade may be impacted significantly.

"If we can't get the security, then we, like other parades, have talked about moving out of the city of Baton Rouge," Robert King, President of Mystic Krewe of the Preservation of Lagniappe.

King and some of the board members of the organization went before the Metro Council on Wednesday night, asking them to provide security for their Spanish town parade, as they have for many years prior.

King says they have been told several different prices that they would have to pay for security on the day of the parade. He says at one point he was told it'd cost them $50,000 to hire officers.

"Someone from the mayor's office said 112 people at $75 an hour, roughly $75,000, but now we hear that it's $55,000," King said.

King says the Spanish Town parade brings in over $4 million in economic impact for the city of Baton Rouge in just two days, along with a tax revenue of over $200,000.

"It's just something Baton Rouge doesn't need to lose. It'll be very painful if next year you don't have parades," he said.

Baton Rouge Police Chief TJ Morse says the excess amount of overtime used for officers to patrol special events is just something that is not budgeted for their department.

"It's many more events, I want to have a fun run, so give me 20 officers for 6 hours of overtime, and all of those things just start adding up, adding up, adding up, and it's all just on overtime, that's just not in the budget," Morse said.

Morse says the cost for officers for parades would be closer to $50 to $55 an hour.

"Which is a lot more than the majority of officers make on overtime, so it's more likely that we can fill at the spots that we need to fill. Last year, we had to reach out to ABC, Constables office, Sheriffs office, a bunch of other places," he said.

Metro Councilman Cleve Dunn suggested creating some type of policy that requires entities to request officers for their event, and then be evaluated on whether the event is a return on investment for the city-parish.

"Fleshing out some sort of policy, or ordinance that all requests can be evaluated by and measured by," Dunn said.

King hopes all the Mardi Gras crews can meet and figure out how security will be provided for their parades.