Serving Clovis, Portales and the Surrounding Communities
Serving Clovis, Portales and the Surrounding Communities
PORTALES — The Portales Rotary Club announced Thursday it will be unable to do its annual decorative holiday lighting for local businesses this year. After an evaluation of the current lighting services throughout the town, extensive damage was found that made doing the lights this year prohibitively expensive.
“There are multiple reasons for this, including but not limited to, hail damage, old wiring, and electrical code concerns,” a press release by the Portales Rotary Club said.
The evaluation came this year when the club’s third-party maintenance provider for the lights was unable to offer their services this year due to workload. Before moving forward with a new plan Club President Joey Martin said they decided to evaluate the electrical systems and that was when they found the issues.
The holiday lighting has been a service the club has offered for the past 25 years through the support of Portales businesses and Roosevelt Chamber of Commerce’s little miss merry christmas fundraiser.
While there were some businesses in exception to the electrical concerns, some are so damaged that the club said “just plugging the lights in would be unsafe.”
“If they are going to utilize the lighting that is there I hope they will do so with the guidance of a licensed electrician, there’s 150 buildings so it’s hard to say which are in poor condition and which are not,” Martin said. “At the end of the day we’re not saying that Portales can’t have Christmas lights, it’s just the Rotary Club, our resources that we can get, are not enough to be able to get all of the lights on.”
Martin expressed his disappointment for having to break the tradition, but said now that they know what the situation is they can start planning their next steps to have the lights on next year. He is hoping to start taking bids for redoing the lighting next spring.
“The chamber is sad that this long tradition has to be curtailed, especially in a year that has been so difficult,” said Roosevelt County Chamber of Commerce Executive Director Karl Terry. “While it has primarily been a Rotary program our Chamber Ambassadors have put in a lot of hours putting on the little miss merry christmas program each year, which has supported the effort.”
Terry added that the little miss merry christmas pageant will be held in a virtual format and funds raised by it will go towards either revamping the business lighting program or to the street pole lighting effort Portales MainStreet oversees.
