Light up Kaukauna: Holiday Decorations

We bought the decorations from an American manufacturer in Indiana (made in the USA!)
The new decorations are all LED and will be less expensive to light each year as well as having a brighter appearance
Their winter design means that they will stay up longer (through Valentine’s Day – about a month longer than we currently keep our pole decorations up)
Our old decorations are 25-30 years old… and require a lot of rewiring and ‘grooming’ each year before they can be hung.
We are assuming a conservative 15 year lifespan for our decorations, with that in mind – the cost per pole for a banner and snowflake is $22/pole per year. If we can keep the decorations in good, usable condition for 20 years, the cost per pole for a banner and snowflake is $16 / pole per year.
Just like you or I can buy discounted holiday decorations after Christmas, so can municipalities! We specifically bought our new holiday decorations in Q1 because we were able to save 40% over list prices later in the year. Good tax dollar stewardship in action!
We got the community involved in the decoration selection process by hanging full size samples in the downtown area near Eagle Plaza and allowing for in-person voting in City Hall and online voting. We had 645 voters vote for their favorite pole decorations and 442 voters vote for their favorite banner designs. 98% of participants voted online.

Information below is from the original campaign for new holidays decorations conducted in July of 2019.

Our current holiday pole decorations have lived a good life and have served our community well, but they do not last forever. Some of our decorations are more than 35 years old! Holiday decorations are usually graded for 10-15 years of lifespan, 20 if a community has excellent weather.
Our current decorations do not have LED lights and are energy inefficient and do not have the same bright shine that newer LED models offer. We feel that we can upgrade our decorations to bring a fresh holiday look to our community and to better light up the Electric City!

We would like to see a combination of pole decorations like the community has now – featuring a pole banner and a pole-mounted lighted decoration. This offers both a daytime and nighttime experience.
We are looking at a mix of of snowflake designs for the pole-mounted lighted decorations. These are not holiday-specific, which means that we can leave them up longer. Our current Christmas decorations are only displayed for approximately 5 weeks – from the beginning of December through the beginning of January. Having a winter-themed decoration would allow for the snowflakes to stay up through Valentine’s Day or possibly through the end of February.
We would have holiday-specific banners on light poles in our downtown area, as we do now. Our current banners were designed before digital printing was a capability and are green with single color writing and design. Printing capabilities have come a long way since we last purchased these banners. We would like to see some more color on the banners in our downtown area. Holiday banners would be displayed for approximately 5 weeks through just past the New Year holiday.

The Light Up sub-committee has already worked to build relationships with Midwest holiday decoration manufacturers and has selected GP Designs from Marion, Indiana as a highly rated, cost competitive manufacturer as our vendor to utilize. Their products are manufactured in the United States. Unfortunately, there are not any commercial wholesale holiday decoration manufacturers we were able to find in Wisconsin.

The most cost effective time of year to order holiday decorations is immediately following the Christmas holiday in early January. We will formally retire our current holiday decorations in January 2020 and will place an order for our new holiday decorations.
The new holiday decorations will debut in Kaukauna in December 2020. We will be hoping to find a community who would like to purchase all or some of our retired holiday decorations. With some significant TLC and volunteer-power to relight and add new garland to the decorations, they could provide several more years of use.