BRADENTON, Fla. — Bradenton residents and visitors may have noticed street lights aren't decorated this holiday season.
After back-to-back hurricanes this year, more than 150 light poles have been reported down to the city of Bradenton. For weeks, city workers have been working around the clock with cleanup efforts as the holiday season quickly approached.
“It came time to put up our Christmas lights and we felt it important to get them up on Bacarrota, because a lot of tradition, people down at Thanksgiving time. They come down during the season," Bradenton Mayor Gene Brown said.
What's missing? The lighted snowflakes that usually adorn street light poles around the city. But the snowflakes plug into the light poles, making that a challenge this year.
"Unfortunately, because of damage from the hurricanes this year, we weren’t able to get up the snowflakes this year," Brown explained.
Officials prioritized the urban core for cleanup and decorations so community events could go as planned and allow residents and visitors to still gather.
“So, we felt it prudent to try and get our parks open, get all of those open for the holiday season, while still having our decorations on Main Street, which is very important, and and off Barcarrota.”
According to Brown, the Florida Department of Transportation said it could take up to 24 months to repair or replace light poles in some areas. This is because not just the poles were damaged in many cases but also because the wiring was pulled out and needs to be replaced.
“It’s a challenge, but we’re still very fortunate, city and county, that we didn’t have any of the deaths or major destruction. And again, my heart goes out to the people that had the flooding.”
Meanwhile, as the city prepares to expand LECOM Park with the addition of a third baseball field, the city has newly acquired land along the Ninth Street West corridor. As a result, those snowflakes and other city equipment have been moved from the public works facility and can be spotted stacked on a parcel across the street.
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