Public to voice opinion on holiday displays

FORT COLLINS - Some members of the citizen Holiday Display Task Force committee said Monday they are unhappy with changes city staff made to a holiday display policy coming before the City Council for a vote Tuesday night.

The task force, which met weekly for more than two months, made recommendations to ban colored lights and wreaths from the exterior of city buildings but to allow building managers' discretion in determining what adorns building interiors - including flexibility for religious displays.

The "hybrid policy," mashed together with parts of the task force recommendation and input from individual council members and the public, would allow for colored lights and Christmas tree displays on city building exteriors, including Oak Street Plaza, but limits what can be placed inside city buildings to items secular in nature unless part of an educational piece of artwork.

"My primary concern is that the (hybrid) recommendation includes aspects that were neither in the original policy nor the task force recommendation," task force spokesman Seth Anthony said. "I am concerned that some of the things were not thought all the way through and carefully (vetted) like the task force recommendations were."

City manager Darin Atteberry disagreed, saying the city has a long-standing policy and tradition of using citizen group input along with other factors when preparing policy for council debate and vote.

"That is why they are called advisory groups," Atteberry said, adding these types of decisions are always left to the city's elected officials.

"I have never had the presumption that the City Council is bound to 100 percent of any task force recommendation. We ask for it to get a balance of citizen participation on the front-end, and it should be recognized that the council is no way bound to accept in the entirety of the recommendations that come before them."

Anthony, who acknowledged the task force recommendations may not be directly in line with what a majority of the community favors, said the city's hybrid policy risks being too restrictive, not inclusive, by its wording.

"With regard to the whole controversy, I think the majority of the public wants to see Christmas trees and wreaths and things the (task force) recommendation may have cut out, and if the City Council wants to take those out they can," Anthony said. "I just hope we don't restrict ourselves from broadening our displays inside city buildings and that is a possibility under the (hybrid) plan."

The task force recommendation calls for interior displays to be determined at the discretion of the building or department manager and could include a religious symbol, such as a menorah, as long as the symbol or display was accompanied by two other religious or cultural symbols.

The city's hybrid policy would only allow for interior displays of winter or holiday symbols secular in nature and written secular messages. The hybrid approach would leave some room for religious or cultural symbols indoors but only if included as a larger piece of educational artwork. Or in other words, a menorah would not be allowed but educational artwork depicting a menorah would be.