PASADENA, Calif. » With its peppy bands, whimsical floats and flood of flowers, the Rose Parade here has long been a symbol of the hopes of a New Year.

But the sputtering economy and municipal budget cuts are presenting new problems for the Tournament of Roses.

Several cities have had to abandon plans to put up floats for the parade, after doing so for decades. One company that had built floats for 25 years announced that it was going out of business, after its most reliable customers dropped out of the parade. And Occupy protesters threaten to show up 40,000 strong along the parade route to blanket the area with their message that "not everything is coming up roses."

As if anyone needed reminding.

Nearly every city in Southern California — and in hard-pressed regions across the country — is struggling with deep budget cuts, trimming back park services and reducing city staff. In the last few years, five cities have dropped out of the parade and several more considered doing so, only to be rescued by private funds. Other cities have drastically scaled back their floats to save money. And few of those who left expect to re-enter the parade anytime soon.

The city of Long Beach, which faced a $43 million gap in its $400 million budget, had put a float in the parade every year for nearly nine decades. But with cutbacks all over the city, including its tourism department, the decision to drop out was hardly difficult, Mayor Bob Foster said.

"It just doesn’t rank high on a priority list during times like this," Foster said. "I don’t relish the decision, but I don’t think people are going to argue that we should keep a float when we are cutting libraries."

In the middle of the 20th century, the parade was a way for small towns in the San Gabriel Valley, northeast of Los Angeles, to attract newcomers. The sun shining on the snow-capped mountains would stoke the westward dreams of viewers bundled up in the Midwest and Northeast, or so the hope went.

"The message was always ‘Come to Southern California and grow,’ and everyone wanted to be a part of that," said Joe Mathews, an Irvine senior fellow at the New America Foundation, and a Pasadena native who has attended dozens of parades. "But that’s a hard sell to make these days, when there is a real slowdown in the number of people coming, and Californians are really schizophrenic about whether they actually want more people."

And as migration to California has slowed in the past several years, many cities in the region have abandoned any illusions that a float is going to lure anyone.

Even Rick Jackson, the president of the Tournament of Roses Association, finds it a tough sell. Jackson, an accountant, says he would hard pressed to tell a city that paying upwards of $200,000 for a float is a wise use of money. "A long time ago it was less about selling something and more about participating in something," said Jackson, who takes a matter-of-fact view of the changes. "Now people are looking for a return on their investment. They want to know what they are going to get out of it. That’s just the way of the world now."

And the cutbacks are not limited to cities.

Even some of the most longstanding companies that sponsored floats have bowed out. For the first time in anyone’s memory, there will be no team of Clydesdales representing Budweiser and St. Louis. The company, now a subsidiary of a multinational corporation, decided to drop out of the parade to focus on sponsorships that "reach a higher concentration of beer drinkers" and "more directly discuss the Budweiser brand."

Certainly, other companies and organizations are eager to take the open spots in the two-hour parade, but Jackson said the waiting list had shrunk considerably in recent years.

In a place where few leaves change and snow does not fall, the parade is part of the holiday ritual; the metal bleachers begin going up along the parade route before Thanksgiving. Tens of thousands of people camp out the night before for what could be described as a 24-hour party. (Because the parade, normally scheduled for New Year’s Day, is never held on a Sunday, this year it will take place on Monday, Jan. 2.)

Initially, people involved in Occupy Pasadena bristled at the notion of protesting along the parade route, but most seem to have come around after organizers assured them that they would not disrupt the parade itself.

Parade officials said they were not overly concerned.

"We’re always worried about a whole host of things," Jackson said. "We know that groups want to be here for the cameras, and we’re always prepared to deal with anything."

None of this is enough to discourage the parade’s most ardent devotees.

When Glendale officials openly discussed dropping out of the parade after 98 years, longer than any city aside from Los Angeles, private donors leapt to help the city cobble together the $100,000 it needed.

"I’m a sentimental person, but even I know this is a tough sell," said Dave Weaver, a Glendale city councilman who fought to keep the money for the float. "There are a lot of things that we have done around here that have just died off. This can’t just be another one of those things."

© 2011 The New York Times Company