Carefree Lights Up on November 28, and the Lights Behind It Changed This Fall

By mid-October, colored flags had appeared on some of the trees and cacti in Carefree Desert Gardens. In an October 15 notice, the Town of Carefree explained that the flags mark where Christmas lights will go. Every year someone has to decide which saguaro gets wrapped and which mesquite carries a strand. Until this season, the Town's own Public Works crew did that work.

On Saturday, November 28, the 20-foot tree near the Veterans Memorial will light up as it does every year, and the scene will look familiar to anyone from the Lower Villages who has stood in the Gardens on a cool evening in late November. The work behind it is new. In October the Town Council changed who hangs the lights, crews began replacing the string lights along the Easy Street rooflines, and repairs were scheduled for the systems that power the Gardens.

Five Hundred Hours of Lights

The staff report Town Administrator Kristen Krey prepared for the October 6, 2026 Town Council meeting lays out the numbers. According to the report, Carefree's Public Works Department has four full-time employees. They maintain streets and rights-of-way, drainage, traffic signs, Town facilities, equipment, storm response, event support, and the Desert Gardens and Town Center. The report estimates that installing and removing the holiday lights takes about 500 staff hours a year. Spread across four people, that is about 125 hours each, or more than three work weeks per employee.

The report then prices those hours. Using the FY27 adopted budget, 500 hours of Public Works time works out to about $16,533 in straight salary, or about $25,459 with benefits. The proposed vendor cost was $14,595.25, chosen from three quotes.

The staff report says plainly that the $25,459 is not cash savings, because the Town pays its Public Works employees either way. The benefit is that about 500 hours of time already in the budget can go back to core municipal work. The report also notes that the recommended vendor has done this work for the Town in past years. The Town's October 15 notice confirmed that Council approved outsourcing the installation and removal to a local vendor. It said the change frees staff for streets, drainage, signage, public facilities and the Gardens themselves.

So this year the Gardens lights go up under a contract, and the hours the four-person crew used to spend on them go back to the Town's regular maintenance list.

A New Roofline for Easy Street

The same staff report covers the lights you see from the sidewalk on Easy Street. The string of lights along the tops of the buildings, roughly from Athens to Carefree Plaza, went up in FY17. Town crews had repaired it steadily for five years, and the report says it had reached the end of its life.

The Town collected three quotes and selected Festive Lighting AZ LLC. That company installed the original line and also submitted the lowest quote. The project costs about $9,000 and covers these addresses:

• 10, 18, 22, 26 and 42 Easy Street
• 201, 500 and 748 Easy Street
• Carefree Plaza

The work window was October 10 through 18, with Public Works confirming completion before the fall event season. According to the staff report, the Garden lighting contractor was to work in the same October 10 to 18 period. The Town's October 15 notice described the Garden installation as underway "alongside the replacement of the Town Center's Easy Street string lights."

Other repairs were scheduled for October. The report put a replacement of the obsolete software that controls the Carefree Sundial's lighting strip on the October calendar. It also scheduled replacing one transformer and repairing another to support Garden lighting near the Sundial. At the Sanderson Lincoln Pavilion, the stage lights were repaired and the audio and visual equipment received new parts and testing before the season started. The report lists that work as completed.

That Pavilion is the stage for nearly everything on the holiday calendar, starting with the tree lighting itself.

November 28, From Morning to Concert

The Town's November 2026 calendar and its October 27 announcement set out the day in this order:

1. 10 a.m. Kiwanis Christmas for the Kids opens the day.
2. 5 p.m. The crowd gathers in Carefree Desert Gardens around the 20-foot Christmas tree near the Veterans Memorial. The Desert Hills Presbyterian Church Bell Ringers play, and Joyful Sounds, a local group of singers drawn from several communities, leads the carols.
3. The countdown. Mayor John Crane shares his holiday wishes and then counts down to lighting the tree.
4. The walk across the street. Young string players from Jubilate Conservatory of Music provide music at the Sanderson Lincoln Pavilion while the Town serves free hot chocolate.
5. 6 p.m. The Christmas concert begins. Performers include the Desert Cactus Kickers, a senior tap troupe, and POP, the Performing Outreach Project, an inclusive dance group. Young vocalists from Jubilate Conservatory of Music and Desert Hills School of Music sing holiday standards, including "White Christmas."

The Town calls one part of the program new this year. Desert Hills Presbyterian Church will present a retelling of the Christmas story, with readings and traditional carols sung by a combined choir of local voices.

The whole evening covers two sites, the Gardens and the Pavilion just across the street. Both were on the Town's fall work list. Out-of-town guests arriving for Thanksgiving week can do both in one evening on foot.

The Rest of the Season Runs Through the Pavilion

From mid-November through December, nearly every regular event on Carefree's calendar takes place in Town Center, and many of them on the Pavilion stage whose repairs the report lists as completed. The Visit Carefree events page lists the Sanderson Lincoln Saturdays lineup, live music from 1 to 3 p.m. on select Saturdays, through the end of December. Carefree Art Night runs from 4 to 7 p.m. on the third Thursday of each month from October through May, according to a Town press release. The calendar after this Thursday looks like this:

Chanukah in Carefree takes the Pavilion for nine straight evenings, with details at chanukahincarefree.com. That means the Saturday concerts on December 5 and December 12 share the stage with the 5:30 p.m. Chanukah gathering later the same day, so on those two Saturdays you can catch both without leaving Town Center.

The Town's vendor arrangement covers removal of the holiday lights as well as installation. According to the staff report, the Town is also developing a multi-year maintenance and capital plan for the Desert Gardens. It covers water features, irrigation, electrical and lighting components, fire features, seating and event infrastructure. The plan will set recurring inspection and preventive-maintenance schedules so repairs and replacements can be planned in advance instead of waiting for things to fail.

If you are hosting family in the Lower Villages this season and want help planning their visit, or you would like to talk about how Carefree's Town Center fits into everyday life at Desert Mountain, Linda Salkow is glad to help. And if this season has you curious about your own home's value, request a home valuation.