There will be holiday lights in downtown Glencoe this year, but getting them in place for the village required an unusual route.
The village had to purchase nearly $50,000 in holiday lights, after village employees discovered the wrong type of lights were in storage.
Village Manager Phil Kiraly traced the issue back to 2022 when the village made a commitment to shift from incandescent lights to LEDs. The change was made with the belief LEDs are more energy efficient and have a longer useful life.
“In doing so, we ordered several cases/boxes of new lights from a vendor last year and placed them in storage with the expectation that we would order more this year,” Kiraly explained in an email. “When we took those cases of lights out of storage this fall to begin to restring the lights in the downtown, we discovered that while the cases/boxes were marked identically, the lights themselves were different — different brightness (lumens) and color (not all the same shade of warm white).”
Upon the discovery of the incorrect lights, the village had to go out and acquire additional lights.
“We need more than we thought we needed and they are harder to get right now,” Kiraly noted at the Sept. 21 Village Board meeting. “We do anticipate having to purchase about $49,900 worth of lights.”
To expedite the process to start working on getting the displays ready in time, Kiraly moved ahead with the purchase. He said he would ask trustees to pass a confirming resolution in October for the purchase as the Village Manager’s spending authority is $25,000.
“If we waited until the October board meeting there is no way the public works department would have enough time to get all those lights out on the trees in the one remaining month we have,” Kiraly said.
Kiraly said the public works department has started installing the lights in advance of the holidays.
Finance Director Nikki Larson said the village would be refunded $12,500, the total amount spent on the initial set of lights.
Daniel I. Dorfman is a freelance reporter with Pioneer Press.
