My name is Tim Seher, I live at 3017 East Richards Row which is in Winterhaven.
Winterhaven Festival Light starts on December 11th, it runs I believe through December 26th.
This year is kind of the first year that the city didn't fund us, so we kind of went out and got some sponsorships for it.
And it's kind of open to the public, and I think they've been doing it for over 50 years.
We all explained what was happening and the community voted unanimously to try to raise the money and keep the festival going.
The impacts of that are it's going to be a more commercial event than it has been in the past,
but it's an important event for a lot of Tucsonans and it's an important event for the neighborhood to be honest.
Without the festival it's just like any other neighborhood in the city really.
Even though I've been running this for five years now, I didn't really realize how important it was to so many people
until we started talking about canceling it. And for a lot of people, especially low income people, they come here every year.
And I think it's just a happy place to be and it's a tradition for a lot of people during Christmas holidays.
They came back through, we kind of had an idea they weren't going to fund it because of the city budget and everything else.
So it was probably in September they finally said, no, we've got to look for sponsorship or cancel it altogether.
I mean, I think that people would still come and I think people would have decorated their garden and their houses, front yards.
But the real problem would have been the security and the safety of the people coming.
That was always the major concern when they knew that the budget cuts had happened.
So it would have been a really, really big dilemma and somehow we would have had to work it out.
I'm sure as a community we would have, and it would have been a really difficult situation because knowing that somehow the people are just going to come.
This is such a tradition and they wouldn't believe that it wouldn't happen, I think, also.
So somehow people would have got together and made it happen.
The role we play is we just kind of put a display out on the front lawn for people to enjoy.
This year's display is a bunch of, well, we call them a village, and we design them and decorate them for people to look at.
Usually every building has something that moves in it or is an interactive.
So we have a barn all the way down to a sleigh wash this year.
It's a way of a family enjoying something together.
I think that's a really big thing because obviously an economic situation now is very difficult to go off and entertain a family because it costs so much.
But this is one way of enjoying it. It's also something part of the time of the year with the lights and the fun and all the association of Santa Claus and so on traditions that particularly children obviously enjoy.
Everybody can enjoy it because even as an adult you'll find it fun and somehow looking at houses decorated in all the different ways that happen around here.
That it really makes people feel good and happy.
Come and enjoy the holiday, see what it's like in the desert. It's kind of different.
I came from the east. I've been here nine years and it's just interesting to have tons and tons of people come through and ooh and ah about what people do.
So that's it just to enjoy it.
