ST. AUGUSTINE, Fla. – The wildly popular Nights of Lights holiday light display overwhelmed some parts of St. Augustine last season and sent the city into a deficit of more than $300,000.
The event is funded by the St. Johns County Tourism Development Council, but city leaders acknowledged during a meeting Monday night that they need to secure more funding to safely run the 65-day light show.
Tens of thousands of people visited St. Augustine to see the show, which ran from late November through the end of January.
Tourists are certainly great for business, but dozens of people living in the area raised concerns during public comment at Monday’s St. Augustine City Commission meeting about bumper-to-bumper traffic and lack of safety.
“The Nights of Lights, in the beginning, they were lovely. Now, they’re a horror. They are the Nights of Fright,” said Isabelle Dixon, who has lived in St. Augustine for 40 years.
Dixon said that during two nights of the holiday light display she couldn’t get to her own home because traffic was stopped dead on Cordova Street.
“What if there was a heart attack, a fire? They couldn’t get in. It’d be impossible,” Dixon said.
Bryce Anderson, who works in St. Augustine, said one of the biggest issues is pedestrians, but he cautioned against reducing the event.
“I fully believe that the best thing we can do is manage pedestrians, having people help manage those crosswalks,” he said. “I know that we are discussing potentially pulling things back, but I have the mindset of when you turn the faucet off, there is potential that it may never come back on, so I caution you with those decisions. Take into consideration how hard we’ve worked to build these up and what it does for our community.”
Among the long-term solutions city commissioners are considering are a new parking garage at the intersection of King Street and U.S. 1 and an app to track available parking citywide.
Commissioners also hope to lease the parking lot at the Bank of America building Downtown for cooling stations, first-aid and 100 more portable restrooms.
But all of that depends on the city getting more money for the event. Commissioners said they will discuss sources for that funding in the coming weeks.
Art Box Gallery owner Deborah Silbar said the funding shouldn’t have to come from property holders.
“As a building owner and resident, I am very supportive of finding a middle ground to fund added police that will be necessary,” Silbar said. “There should be some kind of fund that pays for that instead of all property holders being taxed.”