by John Dowd
On Tuesday, Oct. 24, the Hamilton City Council held a special meeting. However, this was no regular meeting. This time, instead of meeting in City Hall, the council met in the back of a passenger van. For the first time ever, the council decided to do a town ride-around and judge Halloween houses. Eligible homes were ones that were nominated into a city-wide “Halloween Homes” competition. Mayor Dominic Farrenkopf was the driver and council members navigated and voted on the best, spookiest and most festive homes in the competition.
The city also hosts a house competition during Christmas and council members plan to make this ride-along together a regular thing for that, as well. The idea for doing a Halloween house competition came from council members Dan Mitchell and Robin Pruitt. Mitchell said that the street they live on, 4th Street, has historically seen a vast number of trick-or-treaters, sometimes to the tune of thousands a night. The area is lit up well and some of the houses are intricately decorated. They thought, why not do the same Christmas decoration contest but for Halloween?
Homes were nominated based on how they were decorated, and entered in one of three categories including Spooktacular, Harvest, and Theme. The first category is for scariest house, the second was the house determined most fall festive and the third was a home based on a particular theme throughout the decoration.
All but two members of the council came to ride along and voted, and the council was impressed with the creativity and spookiness of all the houses they saw. If Halloween and spooky houses is not enough, the council explained that there were actually 13 entrants into the competition this year, maintaining the spooky theme of the night. The overall winner of the night would receive a grand prize of $100 in Halloween candy, and winners for each category would receive prospective signs from the council to display in their yards.
“There’s so many beautiful houses but there are just the ones that entered to judge,” said Cynthia Fleming, Deputy City Clerk, who rode along with the council. They hope the event will grow, and more people will enter next year. Houses entered were then included on a map that the community was able to see and use for Halloween night.
The Overall Winner was Seth and Justine Watkins’ house on 7th street. It was voted as the winner unanimously by all who came on the ride-along, with an incredible live pumpkin plant included in their display with numerous large pumpkins sprouting from it. The winner for Theme was Sara Padilla on Madison Street, the Spooktacular winner was Michelle Speake on Lyndale Avenue and the Harvest winner was Kimberly Paye on Oakwood Court.