Nights of Lights needs more county funding, St. Augustine says

St. Augustine’s massive and widely marketed display of holiday lights brought tens of thousands of visitors to town this past holiday season. City leaders and businesses like the attention, but the city says it needs more money if Nights of Lights is to continue operating at its current scale.

“The city government hasn’t seen crowds this big, events this large, with the resources we have, and we need help,” St. Augustine City Manager David Birchim told the City Commission Monday.

St. Johns County’s Tourism Development Council already chips in several hundred thousand dollars, but Birchim said last year’s costs eclipsed that, landing the city with a deficit of more than $300,000. 

Mayor Nancy Sikes Kline says she believes the Tourism Development Council will be amenable to chipping in more for leasing parking, more portable restrooms, a consultant and other costs.

‘Nights of Fright’

St. Augustine doesn’t know exactly how many people came Downtown during the 65-day Nights of Lights, but they do know this: A record-setting 19,450 people used the city’s free shuttle service, and more than 60,000 parked in the city’s parking garage.

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And many more people sat in the city’s gridlocked traffic.

During a post mortem discussion about Nights of Lights Monday, city leaders discussed the biggest problems St. Augustine faced during the event: testy tourists, rideshare nightmares and traffic so busy that emergency services saw response time slow down.

While the sheer number of cars makes driving around St. Augustine difficult during Nights of Lights, Birchim identified a few key reasons why traffic tends to grind to a halt during the event’s busiest nights. 

First, large crowds of pedestrians tend to ignore traffic signals, forcing cars to sit through multiple lights.

Rather than using the free shuttle that operated during some of the event’s premiere nights, many people relied on rideshare services like Uber and Lyft. The plan for next year is to designate a pick-up and drop-off location for rideshare services — to prevent drivers from stopping in traffic while they pick up and drop off tourists. 

It wasn’t just the roads that were overwhelmed. 

The increased number of trash cans weren’t enough, as the city’s solid garbage crews weren’t able to get Downtown to empty them. Public restrooms weren’t enough, and the city heard reports of public urination and aggression toward city employees while people waited in long bathroom lines. 

In addition to what Birchim said was a “pickpocket group from out of town” that targeted attendees, the New Year’s Eve attack in New Orleans, when a man ran over and killed several people in a crowd, was “a wake-up call” about safety.

Even with five times the normal number of police officers Downtown during Nights of Lights’ kickoff and an increased presence throughout the span of the event, the city wants to explore adding additional traffic barricades and other security measures during future events.

Complaints had been coming in since before Nights of Lights even began. The most common one? Residents have a hard time getting to and from work while they fight the influx of tourists.

One resident, speaking at Monday’s meeting, said she calls the two-month-long festivity “Nights of Fright” because of how much she hates driving around town.

Among the suggestions for making the event more accessible to residents came from City Commissioner Cynthia Garris, who floated waiving parking fees for people who live in St. Johns County on Sundays during Nights of Lights.

“It’s kind of sad that we, the residents, can’t enjoy the Nights of Lights as much as our tourists,” Garris said.

The city is also investigating long-term solutions like a new parking garage at the intersection of King Street and U.S. 1 and an app to track available parking citywide, and city leaders are eyeing the July 4 holiday as an opportunity to test out some short-term solutions to the city’s traffic and overcrowding woes.

The city hopes to roll out its biggest — and likely costliest — solution then: leasing the parking lot at the Bank of America building Downtown as a staging ground for cooling stations, first-aid and 100 more portable restrooms. 

But all of that is contingent on the city’s getting more money.

“We’ve already invested too much this year,” City Commission Barbara Blonder said. “If I don’t see that payback coming, I’m going (to) have a big change in supporting Nights of Lights going forward.”