Kiwanis to take a year off and evaluate
A six-decade old tradition will take a hiatus this year, as the Kiwanis Club of Healdsburg recently voted not to hold its annual Christmas tree lot.
“We are not going to do it for 2017, but we are looking at how we might do it in 2018,” said Randy Collins, the current president of the club, founded in 1923.
Collins said the club faced a “perfect storm” of factors that led to a vote of the members earlier this month to suspend the tree lot operations.
One of the biggest factors was the availability of free labor. In late 2016, the Lytton Tribe purchased the Salvation Army facility on Lytton Springs Road and the adult rehabilitation program was moved elsewhere.
In recent years, the men in the rehab program provided much of the volunteer labor involved in loading and unloading heavy live trees for the month-long tree sales period. “A good 50 percent of the staff we used to operate the tree lot were guys from there,” Collins said, “and they were young, strong guys.”
Collins said there’s another issue at work as well. He said the members of the Kiwanis Club are aging. “Our membership is not a lot of spring chickens and our longtime volunteers are ready to take a break.”
The use of the lot north of Healdsburg City Hall was rumored to be a factor, but Collins said it is not. The city awarded a contract to pave the area for parking and scheduled the work to be done in time for the tree lot.
The Kiwanis originally asked the city to consider adding 140 metal sleeves, set into the parking lot surface that would accommodate the tree lot infrastructure.
Collins said the city was cooperative and helpful, but was legally unable to install the sleeves without being reimbursed by the club. “That would have been a gift of public funds,” Collins said.
The cost of engineering and installing the sleeves was estimated at $20,000 and Collins said the club set aside the money, but made the decision to suspend tree lot operations separately from concerns over the cost and location.
The lot was started sometime in the 1950s, said Gino Bellagio, who recalls working at the lot as a volunteer. “Al Barbieri started it,” Bellagio said, recalling the man who founded the Healdsburg Boys Club (now the Boys & Girls Club).
The youth club ran the lot for three decades and Bellagio said it was in various locations around town, moving from one empty and available lot to another, including a time at the Garrett Hardware parking lot.
Kiwanis member Bob Taylor said the youth club relinquished the lot project in the late 1980s and the Kiwanis voted to take it over.
The loss of income from the 2017 tree lot will impact the work of the Kiwanis Club, which Collins said gives out around $60,000 in local grants each year. “We will have to be more discriminating in how we donate money and prioritize donation requests,” Collins said.
Collins also expressed concern over changing demographics in the community. “It seems like there’s a trend of all these dedicated people who’ve lived here forever are aging or dying and new people are not stepping up.”
Collins added, “We recognize the impact this will cause for the community and we ask people for their patience, we don’t want to let them down. We’re sorry for any inconvenience this will cause for our community and we hope to be back next year.”
