- January 21, 2025
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The longtime organizer of the Palm Coast Yacht Club’s Holiday Boat Parade has resigned, citing frustration with city costs and regulations. The Palm Coast City Council indicated at the Jan. 21 meeting that the city would plan to take over the next parade, in December 2025.
The parade, one of the largest annual events in the city, grew to over 100 boats in 2023, attracting large crowds along the Intracoastal Waterway, and has taken place for over 40 years.
City Council member Theresa Pontieri announced at the meeting that she had heard that the organizer, Sarah Ulis, who has led the Palm Coast Yacht Club event for the past nine years, was upset with city staff’s handling of the event.
“That was pretty disheartening for me,” Pontieri said. “I think we need to do everything we can to repair that relationship.”
Acting City Manager Lauren Johnston reported that she and Mayor Mike Norris had met with Ulis on Jan. 17, “and it was determined that [the Yacht Club] no longer wanted to take over operations of the boat parade, and it could be a city-ran event.”
The event, which Ulis said cost around $4,000 last year, was too much for the Yacht Club, but the city wants to work with Ulis to make sure the event maintains its “character and charm,” Johnston said.
“Their biggest thing was, it’s beyond them,” Norris said to the City Council. “They can’t handle it financially. … I think it’s grown beyond the Yacht Club. … We came to a mutual agreement that they couldn’t handle it anymore.”
The city will plan to include the event in its next fiscal year budget, which begins in October. Norris suggested that boat registration fees could be added, to help cover the costs.
In a phone interview with the Observer, Ulis agreed with the characterization that the event had proven too costly for the Yacht Club to bear, but she was upset with the city’s handling of the event.
“I decided to resign weeks before the parade happened,” she said, but didn’t make it official until after the event. “The city was making it so difficult for the boat parade to exist. … Every week I had a new form to fill out.”
In her experience, the regulations had grown “increasingly worse,” including requests to supply portable toilets for the crowds, which she felt the city should pay for.
“They took all the joy out of it,” Ulis said. “It became a battle. They treated us as an inconvenience.”
In an interview with the Observer after the meeting, Johnston said the Holiday Boat Parade is a family favorite in her own family, as well.
But the costs and regulations are part of the process, she said. "When you have a special event, it's [the city's] obligation to keep people safe. ... It sometimes takes resources, whether that's public safety with fire, EMS, and some public works staff, with light towers so people don't trip and fall, and parking so somebody doesn't get hurt crossing the street."
Johnston added: "We encourage special events to happen all over our community. It's something that people love about Palm Coast — the quality of life and sense of community. The city can't put on every event, so we are just trying to find a balance."
The parade, which had 108 registered boats in 2023, had much fewer in 2024, possibly as few as 50, Ulis said. In part, that could be because the city asked for a date change to Sunday, Dec. 17, 2024, to accommodate the city’s Starlight Parade on Saturday, Dec. 16.
Despite her frustrations, Ulis said said she is happy to be an adviser for the 2025 Holiday Boat Parade. Her experience may help the city avoid some pitfalls, she said, such as requiring a registration fee, which she believes won’t work. After all, she said, if someone wants to decorate their boat and join in on the night of the event, what’s to stop them?
In her resignation letter, Ulis said to the boaters: “I truly hope that the Parade will continue to be a part of Palm Coast life in whatever form the City decides upon, and I hope that you will be able to support it.”
