Mobile Council Approves $55,725 City Mardi Gras Float in Tight 5-2 Vote

MOBILE, Ala. — Mobile celebrates the oldest organized Carnival in the United States. The city government itself, however, does not own a float.

That may change Tuesday.

The Mobile City Council is scheduled to consider a resolution that would have the City of Mobile commission a custom Mardi Gras float of its own.

The Terms

The resolution, sponsored by Mayor Spiro Cheriogotis, would authorize an agreement between the city and Mirth Artis LLC for construction of a custom City of Mobile Mardi Gras float.

The base contract price is $45,725.00.

The resolution also sets a ceiling: a total amount not to exceed $55,725.00, exclusive of separately procured chassis welding.

That structure is standard for fabrication contracts and worth reading carefully. The $45,725 base covers the agreed scope. The $10,000 difference between the base price and the ceiling functions as a contingency — authority to cover changes or additions without returning to the council for a second vote on every adjustment.

The chassis welding carve-out means exactly what it says. A parade float is built on a trailer or chassis, and the structural welding of that underframe is being handled as a separate procurement rather than folded into this contract. That is a common split: the fabricator who builds and decorates the superstructure is frequently not the shop that does structural steel work.

Anyone comparing this figure with the cost of other floats should account for that exclusion. The number authorized here is not the all-in cost of a finished, road-ready float.

Why a City Would Want One

Mobile’s Carnival is organized and financed almost entirely by mystic societies — private membership organizations that build, maintain and roll their own floats each season. The city’s role has traditionally been infrastructure and public safety: closing streets, staffing routes, handling cleanup and permitting.

A city-owned float changes that relationship at the margin. It gives the municipal government a vehicle of its own for parades and civic events, one it controls rather than borrows, and it can be used year after year across multiple occasions.

It also has value outside Carnival season. A float is a mobile asset that can appear in other parades and civic celebrations throughout the year, and cities that own one typically use it well beyond the event that justified the purchase.

Context

The timing is notable. The proposal arrives in the same period the city confirmed that Regions Arena will not be finished in time to host Mardi Gras events in 2027, pushing that building’s debut to next spring.

The two items are unrelated in scale — a $300 million arena and a float costing less than one-five-thousandth as much — but they sit in the same civic calendar. Mobile’s Carnival will roll in 2027 regardless of what happens with the arena, and the float, if approved, would be part of it.

What Happens Next

The resolution goes before the council at Tuesday’s meeting. Council resolutions of this kind authorize the administration to enter the agreement; they do not themselves complete a purchase.

Update: What the Float Would Actually Look Like

Design documents included with the council agenda give the project a name — “Mobile, Alabama on Parade” — and a level of detail that goes well beyond the dollar figure.

Under the agreement with Mobile-based Mirth Artists LLC, owned by Benjamin Kaiser, the company would build upper and lower decks on a float measuring 12 feet by 32 feet, mounted on a 10-ton wagon the city already owns. The float is specified to include restrooms for men and women, a practical consideration on a parade route that can keep riders aboard for hours.

The agreement lists a completion and delivery date of no later than Tuesday, Dec. 22 — ahead of a Carnival season that begins in January and ends with Fat Tuesday on Feb. 9, 2027.

The design packs in an unusually dense inventory of Mobile landmarks. Among the sculptural elements called for are:

• Bienville Square’s Ketchum Fountain
• Live oak trees, azaleas and other flowers
• RSA-style building facades, including the RSA Tower rising from the deck
• Mobile Police Department motorcycles and a motorcycle escort
• A fire truck, depicted racing through the Bankhead Tunnel
• Parade barricades and other streetscape features

Along the sides, oval and circular vignettes would depict the Cathedral-Basilica of the Immaculate Conception, the University of South Alabama Bell Tower, the Hall of Fame Walk at the Arthur R. Outlaw Mobile Convention Center, the Azalea Trail Maids, the USS Alabama Battleship Memorial Park, a parade marshal on horseback, the city’s official logo and a Mardi Gras doubloon.

A Squirrel and a Leprechaun

Two smaller design features are likely to draw the most attention, and neither is a landmark.

The first is a squirrel holding a peanut — a nod to the Bienville Square squirrels, which became the subject of a genuine municipal controversy in 2022 when the city relocated dozens of the animals after wildlife experts concluded the population had grown large enough to threaten the park’s historic oaks. The episode did nothing to diminish the squirrels’ standing in local folklore; it produced a Mardi Gras marching group, the Mystic Squirrels of Bienville, better known as the Mystic SOBs, which parades on Joe Cain Day.

The second is the Crichton Leprechaun. The 2006 television report, with its witness interviews, amateur composite sketch and quotes that long ago passed into internet history, remains one of Mobile’s most widely recognized cultural exports. The sketch now appears on hats, shirts and merchandise across the city and has been displayed in a museum in Dublin, Ireland. Under the proposed design, it would be hidden in the branches of one of the float’s oak trees.

That inclusion is not uncomplicated. In the years after the broadcast, some residents said the attention brought ridicule to Crichton, a predominantly Black neighborhood north of downtown.

Councilman Cory Penn said the character has since become something the city can claim on its own terms.

“The Crichton Leprechaun and those moments are a part of Mobile,” Penn said. “We have to utilize things like this to get people excited. It’s moments where it’s fun.”

“We don’t want to make this, of course, a joke,” he added. “But to make it fun and bring people together. This is an opportunity for people to celebrate.”

The Council Is Not Unanimous

Councilman Josh Woods, who chairs the council’s finance committee, signaled he wants a closer look before committing public money.

“I look forward to finding more information out,” Woods said. “As far as funding and everything, I think we need to vet that out a little more.”

Councilman Ben Reynolds took the opposite view, arguing the purchase is overdue.

“It’s been put off for far too long out of fear or worry or pushback from people who say we shouldn’t be doing that sort of expenditure,” Reynolds said. “But the reality is we are riding around in a box car. We have guests who are riding in a crummy float. It should’ve been done many years ago so when the city has parades that they participate in, it puts a good first impression on our visitors and citizens alike.”

For years the city has used a basic boxcar-style float in the five or six Carnival parades it joins each season.

Reynolds also argued the council should give the designers latitude on the content.

“These are Mobile designers,” he said. “They are not an out-of-town outfit. I hope we defer to them in many respects.”

Penn framed the project as a chance to put Mobile’s claim as the Birthplace of Mardi Gras on wheels.

“It’s a great opportunity to highlight those things throughout our city,” he said.

Update: Council approves city Mardi Gras float in 5-2 vote (Sept. 22, 2026)

The Mobile City Council on Tuesday, Sept. 22, approved the agreement with Mirth Artists LLC to design and build a city-owned Mardi Gras float, clearing the way for the project to roll during the 2027 Carnival season.

The vote was 5-2. Councilman Josh Woods and Councilwoman Samantha Ingram voted no. Because most council items require a supermajority of five votes, one more “no” vote would have defeated the measure. Ingram was not available for comment after the meeting.

The contract carries a base price of $45,725 with a cap of $55,725. The float will be called “Mobile, Alabama on Parade” and will replace the basic trailer that city officials have ridden in local parades for years.

“Time to graduate”

Council President C.J. Small, 48, said he remembers watching that same rolling box as a child, with former Mayor Mike Dow and Councilman Clinton Johnson aboard.

“Ever since I was a little boy, I remember seeing Councilman Clinton Johnson, former Mayor Mike Dow, on this little box cart going down the street that says, ‘Happy Mardi Gras’ on it,” Small said after the vote. He said the old float “has served its purpose.”

“Mardi Gras is our economic engine,” Small said. “We make plenty of money off of Mardi Gras, and for us to be the mother of Mardi Gras, the birthplace of Mardi Gras, it’s time for us to graduate from a box cart.”

Councilman Ben Reynolds, who had pushed for the purchase before the vote, said he did not understand the opposition and framed the float as a matter of the city’s image, particularly for visitors who ride with council members.

“We’re the home of Mardi Gras. We’ve been riding around in a cotton wagon for years and it’s not just us. It’s the City Council and the mayor who are using the thing, but it’s our guests as well,” Reynolds said. “It’s not a very good showing when we have to put them on this cotton wagon for the home of Mardi Gras. I think it’s a long past due expense and I’m glad we got it across the finish line.”

Reynolds noted that the city has hosted guests such as Navy admirals on its float.

Why Woods voted no

Woods, who represents District 6, said his vote reflected what he heard from residents who saw the float as an unneeded use of public money.

“It’s a representative form of government and I’m representing the feedback I got from my district,” Woods said. He added that he had nothing against the float itself, but that a good number of constituents had asked him not to support it.

The mayor’s plans beyond Carnival

Mayor Spiro Cheriogotis, who sponsored the resolution, said he expects the float to serve the city for at least two decades and to work as a marketing tool outside of Mardi Gras. He said it could appear in smaller “boutique parades” for conventions and groups visiting Mobile, including events connected to the Arthur R. Outlaw Mobile Convention Center.

“I have a desire for Mobile’s Mardi Gras, the mother of Mardi Gras, to be seen year-round,” Cheriogotis said. “It’s going to be a better representation of our city than we’ve had in the past.”

The mayor acknowledged the cost is significant, but said the city is commissioning an entirely new float from the ground up. He said the design should include icons and images that “scream Mobile for anyone from here or not from here.”

Inside the float barn

Work is already underway. Ben Kaiser, owner of Mirth Artists, said he and four other artists are preparing props, foliage and cardboard at the company’s float barn off Conti Street.

“The city actually picking us to do a job like this, we were all super stoked to actually do this opportunity,” Kaiser said.

Kaiser said the crew does not stretch canvas or use foam. Everything is built from papier-mache and recycled cardboard, with forms sculpted by hand and constructed hollow, which he described as the most tedious part of the job.

The float will be mounted on a chassis and measure 32 feet long and 12 feet wide. Kaiser said Steve Muscle will handle construction and George Campanile will do the electrical work. The team aims to build the float in about two months, then paint and fine-tune it before the Dec. 22 deadline.

Among the features Kaiser listed are the Bienville Square fountain, the Bankhead Tunnel and the Crichton Leprechaun perched in a tree. City officials have said Mirth Artists will develop the final design.

Still unanswered: the throws

The float is expected to carry city leaders and guests in Mardi Gras parades and at other events. It has not yet been decided how throws from the city float will be paid for, although the city has covered throws for city representatives in past years.

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