For many Prescott Valley residents and visitors, the lighting of the Town’s Civic Center has become an enjoyable part of the holiday season. Behind the scenes, some hardworking employees begin in October to make the event a breathtaking sight.
On Dec. 6, after a program and a big countdown, Mayor Harvey Skoog will give the order, and the entire Civic Center complex will come alive with multi colored lights. While the lights appear to come on with the flick of a switch, it actually is a carefully choreographed feat. Eight different employees, in radio contact, staged at the police headquarters, the library, the Civic Center building and a well house on Lake Valley Road, all will illuminate their respective areas at the “one” count, said Public Works employee Tim Collins, who has headed up the decorating crew since 1999.
The Town in the mid ‘90s moved the lighting from its traditional location at Robert Road and Highway 69 to Mountain Valley Park. When the Civic Center construction was complete, the Town christened the building’s first holiday season with a small light display at the Town Hall and the police buildings.
Not only has the display grown in size each year (it includes nearly a million lights by Collins’s estimate), it is now almost completely built with LED lighting. Collins said the old incandescent lighting was expensive, fragile and costly to run. The LED lighting costs half as much in electricity, needs less hours for installation, and lasts much longer, some strands as many as eight to 12 years, he said.
Each year, Collins and other public works crew members unpack the lights, look over what they have, and then brainstorm ideas for something new.
“Three years ago at the library a couple of the fleet guys helped design steel ornaments in the shape of a bell, bow, stocking and candy cane. We put lights on them and hung them off the side of the library building. We also designed the trees on the front wall of the building,” he said.
Public works crews and other town employees during the year pass along ideas and new products they’ve seen, and some new items, like the “snow tubes” on several of the center’s larger trees, have been incorporated into the display.
This year, crews have changed the police complex lighting to LED lights, and many more of the smaller trees around the center will be lit.
“Next year, if it’s in the budget, we want to light up the median on Lakeshore between each end of the Civic Circle, so the whole parade route will be lit,” Collins said.
Town Manager Larry Tarkowski said the annual lighting display is a “growing process, similar to what the Town has done. Every year, it’s bigger and better.”
When the display is ready to come down, every strand is separately bagged, labeled, and placed in rubber cans for safekeeping until the next season.
By Dec. 6, Collins and his crews will have labored for two straight months to make it happen. After 13 years, he admits to a bit of “bah humbug” by the time the work is done. But that quickly goes away when the lights come on.
“The best feeling on that Friday night in December is to hear all the kids going ‘ooh’ and ‘aah.’ That’s pretty cool,” he said.
This year’s Festival of Lights program will begin at 4:45 p.m., Friday, Dec. 6, at the Civic Center. The event is free to the public.
Festival of Lights Schedule:
4:45 – 5 p.m.: Music by Coyote Springs Choir
5 – 5:30 p.m.: Music by Liberty Chamber Singers
5:30 p.m.: Welcome by Mayor Harvey Skoog
5:40 p.m.: Children’s Story Time with Chamber CEO Marnie Uhl
5:50 p.m.: Lighting of Civic Center
6 p.m.: Night Light Parade begins
6:30 p.m.: Visit and photos with Santa at Civic Center
6:30 p.m.: Create A Tree Viewing at Civic Center
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