Warrenton aldermen voted Nov. 3 to approve a street closure permit for the annual Hometown Christmas festival on Main Street.

The family-friendly festival will have Main Street closed on the evening of Dec. 5 so visitors can stroll the street and enjoy attractions and shops. The event is free to attend.

Returning this year is a lighted parade where participants are invited to bring golf cart-sized vehicles decked out in Christmas lights. That will happen at 5 p.m. A parade hasn’t been part of the Christmas event for a number of years.

“These will be non-street legal vehicles only, for safety,” said organizer Maggie Hase with the Warrenton Downtown Association. Preregistration and lighting on the vehicles are both required. 

Leading the parade will be the Warrenton High School marching band.

Hase said the parade and other offerings will have a hometown feel that lots of visitors can enjoy. There will be the annual Christmas tree lighting, with a competition for who gets to turn on the lights, as well as a candlelight walk down Main Street.

Stores along the street will have Christmas displays and scavenger hunt items so visitors can check out everything Main Street has to offer. 

“The goal is really to bring awareness to all the businesses on Main Street,” Hase said.

Christmas singers and potentially even character actors will be strolling Main Street along with visitors, adding to “that old feel,” Hase added.

Response to criticism

City ordinance states that the Christmas festival on Main Street should have been approved within 30 days of its submission in August. But after the city missed that window by more than a month, critics commented in October that not approving the festival on time meant it should be denied by default.

Warrenton aldermen disagreed.

“The mistake was made on our part. The staff dropped the ball,” said Ward 3 Alderman Gary Miller. “Even though we have ordinances involving time frames with applications, because this was our error, we felt we needed to correct it.”

Miller said the city’s goal in this situation was to allow for a positive event that’s good for residents and also promotes the Main Street area.

“Each year they have this Christmas special event, and it’s an event that brings families downtown with their children to walk the sidewalks, look at stores, and has music — all things that you typically find at Christmas time. We think it’s a very good tradition to make sure it continues,” Miller said.

Miller added that comparisons between this process and the earlier handling of a proposed fall festival by Papu’s Cuban Cafe are misleading. The Papu’s festival was rejected because organizers refused to pay a refundable cleanup deposit or complete their permit application.

Ward 2 Alderman Gary Auch, in a letter to The Record, agreed that the city had a responsibility to correct its error.

“Should the (festival) applicant and community be deprived of the benefit of the event when the applicant was not at fault? I hardly think so,” Auch said, adding, “The integrity of the board is shown by its willingness to fix the situation and treating the applicant fairly.”