It's always faster to take down the Christmas tree than to put it up.
What took Gainesville's traffic engineering staff several days to decorate in November only took four hours to dismantle on Tuesday.
"I think everybody really enjoyed the holiday season and decorations in the city and are looking forward to the new year," said Bradley Clark, the city's head traffic engineer. "We've been doing this a long time in this department, and it's a good opportunity to add something to the community that everybody likes to see."
For the 29th year, Clark and his staff drove their bucket trucks to the fork of Academy and Green streets to take the star and lights off Rotary International's holly tree.
They handled the decorations carefully, rolling the 3,500 new LED lights on large wooden reels to store at the Lee Gilmer Memorial Airport.
"We're ready to move forward with 2011. We're looking forward to this year's projects, which will include upgrades and timing at certain intersections," Clark said. "We stay busy, that's for sure, but we always like taking time out to work on the tree."
The decorations along Main Street Gainesville will come down this weekend, depending on weather.
The city uses Christmas Decor, a decorating company based out of Holder Landscape Management in Loganville, to put up and take down the Christmas spirit.
"This year we used the same style of decorations as always but used LED lights, which does a lot for energy savings," said Main Street manager Angela Thompson.
When Thompson started her position in March, she researched different types of lights and companies to make sure the city was getting the best deal.
"There's no reason not to go with LED technology now. The lights used to be a blue-white color, but this year, as you could see, they were not," she said. "We pay Christmas Decor a lease, so we don have to pay for storage, and the decorations are refreshed every three years. Financially, this is the least expensive and most cost effective way."
As residents clean up their holiday items, Hall County Recycling Center officials are still collecting Christmas trees through Saturday at any of the 13 Hall County compactor sites or the recycling center at 1008 Chester St. Oakwood residents can drop their trees on the vacant lot next to a mulch pile on the corner of Allen and Railroad streets.
Under Georgia's annual "Bring one for the Chipper" tree recycling program, the trees are chipped into mulch or used as fish habitat. Residents can pick up free mulch from the Hall County Recycling Center starting Monday.
Since the program's inception in 1987, the statewide program has recycled more than 2 million trees for mulch used in playgrounds, government beautification projects and residential yards.