Leaf pickup policy in La Crosse could leave city short of Christmas decorations

When La Crosse’s board of public works decided this year to assign more city workers to leaf collection duty, it apparently cut into other seasonal tasks, such as hanging Christmas decorations on downtown lampposts. 

Volunteers from the City Vision foundation installed some decorations last week, but said weather prevented them from finishing the work. 

Jay Lokken of City Vision tells WIZM’ that the city should provide both the decorations, and the workers to put them up.

“Most cities, matter of fact if you check, won’t let anybody else put something up on their lightposts, which makes sense,” said Lokken.

He hopes that the city council can help solve the problem, or else a crowd-funding campaign could be started to pay for more decorations.        

Gary Padesky of the public works board says it’s unfair for anyone to blame Mayor Tim Kabat for the decision to take city workers off decoration duty.

“We have one month, and all hands are on deck for the leaves,” said Padesky. “Would people rather see Christmas decorations downtown, or would they rather have their leaves picked up?”

The four-week leaf collection period began on October 28th, and is scheduled to end just before Thanksgiving.