By Tim Leeds
There will be a work tomorrow evening at the Holiday Village Shopping Center to continue refurbishing the Christmas decorations for downtown Havre.
The work will be at a storage facility at the Holiday Village, near the west entrance to Herberger's on the back side of the shopping center. It is scheduled to start at 5:30 p.m., and will last "as long as people want to work," said Janine Donoven of the Havre Area Chamber of Commerce.
Donoven helped to organize the HART (Havre Area Renewal Trust) program earlier this year. HART has been collecting donations to try to renew and refurbish the current Christmas decorations, which were originally purchased by local businessmen in the late 1970s.
Donoven said they will be stripping the old garlands and lighting systems off of the decorations, in preparation to install the new materials which were received a few weeks ago.
"We'll be stripping to the bone," she said.
Anyone interested in helping is invited to come to the work party.
"If people want to come, they should bring some nippers and gloves," Donoven said.
Culligan Water Conditioning of Havre donated the use of some water bottles to collect donations at participating businesses for the renewal effort. Shari Brenna, office manager for the chamber, said they don't know how much those contributions came to yet, but other donations totalling more than $4,000 have already come in to the chamber.
"We want to thank everyone for their donations and encourage everyone to continue to donate," Donoven said. "It will make our community a better place to live."
She said they will organize work parties to install the new decorations as soon as possible. She said the Havre JayCees traditionally help out by putting the decorations up before the community tree-lighting at Thanksgiving, so they have to have them done before that.
Donoven said once the Christmas decoration project is done, they will pick a new project for HART to work on.
"There's always something that needs to be done in the community," she said.
