Phoenix City Councilman Sal DiCiccio has asked the city manager to stop acting like the Grinch and allow an Arcadia resident to bring Christmas cheer one more year.
“City officials have officially replaced the Grinch and are looking to shut down a 30-year tradition in Phoenix-the display of Christmas lights. Today, I have asked the city manager to leave the Christmas displays alone. Many in our community have enjoyed and made it a part of their Christmas tradition,” wrote DiCiccio on Facebook. “Every year, just like other families, my wife and I take the kids out at night looking at Christmas displays. This is a tradition in our community and I will do what I need to do to preserve this family tradition. City officials need to relax and get a life, we have better things to do than to regulate Christmas tree displays.”
The Arcadia homeowner, Lee Sepanek, set-up a Gofundme page to help with the legal costs associated with fighting city hall:
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“For more than 30 years we have decorated our home for the holidays. Our display costs us no less than 10K to put up and take down each year. Our costs for self storage units runs us 6K a year, the electric bill is about 1,500.00 plus many other expenses. We do get some donations but not near enough to cover the ever increasing costs. In order to be able to afford doing what we do we started selling cups of Hot Cocoa and Christmas Cookies. We have never made a profit but it does help. In 30 years never a complaint, then new neighbors 6 doors away move in last year and complained to the city of Phoenix Az. about the traffic. City could not stop us from decorating but they did tell us we were in violation of zoning because of the Cocoa sales. I said ok I will give it away, they said we could not do that. If we were to decorate this year they wanted us to hire 5 to 6 adults and put them in reflective vests to walk the streets in my neighborhood and direct traffic and make sure no driveways were blocked. So for this year we are not decorating. We have started this go fund me page to raise money for two things. One to hire an attorney to see if we can fight the city on this. Two if we can raise enough money so next year we can decorate and not have to rely on Cocoa sales just donations. Your support means we can decorate again next year to delight young and old. We would be so grateful if we can get enough funds to make our street light up. They say you cannot fight city hall but we are going to try. Thank You”