Liberty Lake weighs producing Winterglow after nonprofit steps back

Liberty Lake city staff laid out options, budgets and volunteer needs at a town hall after the Winterglow Foundation told the city it had voted to stop producing the annual Winterglow displays and offered the lights and containers to the city for $25,000; the foundation later revised that offer to exclude the event name.

City Administrator Arnaud told the crowd the foundation "approached the city, and the information that we received essentially was that, board members were stepping away, volunteer basis were dwindling, material costs were going up." He said staff briefed council in an April workshop and recommended that the council not accept the foundation's initial offer without further due diligence.

The meeting focused on two practical choices: the city could decline the offer and the foundation would scale back or relocate its displays, or the city could take on production. Staff presented a five-year cost estimate of about $480,000 to produce Winterglow in Orchard Park at the scale used since 2019, including materials, paid labor and other operational costs. The city also estimated annual setup-and-teardown labor at roughly 1,770 hours.

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