News file photo A Alpena Department of Public Works employee hangs up Christmas decorations on the downtown.

ALPENA — Though Santa Claus may have hundreds of elves on staff to decorate the North Pole for Christmas overnight, it takes a little longer for the Alpena Department of Public Works (DPW) to turn the town into a winter wonderland.

Steve Shultz, City of Alpena city engineer, said that it takes longer than people might think to decorate Alpena for the holidays. He said that DPW staff are often broken up into smaller crews to decorate throughout the weeks leading up to the holidays, as they have their regular daily tasks to complete, as well.

“There’s a lot going on in a month leading up to all that,” Shultz said. “And that’s some of the things that people don’t realize is that we can’t have the entire crew out there and have our day-to-day stuff that needs to get done, still.”

“So it takes a smaller crew a lot longer time to get garland on every single light pole, and get everything plugged in, make sure everything’s working,” he added.

Shultz said the biggest challenge in decorating Alpena for the holidays is timing and making sure that all the preparation gets done in conjunction with other DPW duties.

“It’s just the timing and sometimes (DPW staff) can’t get to everything and they get pulled off for a different job,” he said.

“It’s strategic,” he added.

As for the iconic Culligan Plaza tree, Shultz said that Alpena residents don’t have to worry that DPW may not find one for a future year. He said that they scout out potential trees 10 to 12 months in advance.

At one point, he added that DPW had a backlog of people, about five years out, who were interested in donating trees for future years.

“We know which tree, or we have possibilities anyway, of trees that are out there,” Shultz said. “We usually get requests from people to come take a look at their trees.”

He explained that though decorating the town is a time-consuming task, it is still a priority for DPW.

“It’s something we’ve always done and we take pride in it and we get lots of good comments on it throughout the year when people talk about how beautiful everything was decorated for the holidays,” Shultz said. “I think it’s important to keep everybody in the spirit.”

Kayla Wikaryasz can be reached at 989-358-5688 or kwikaryasz@TheAlpenaNews.com.