Well, that quick City Council Housing Committee discussion escalated quickly.

We don’t think the City Council is coming for the Christmas displays that everyone enjoys in December. Nor do we think the city is going to all of the sudden start issuing code violation citations for Halloween or Fourth of July displays.

By and large, people enjoy holiday decorations. Even the grinchiest curmudgeon in our midst can find a little joy in a beautiful Christmas display on a cold December night. You don’t have to be Jack Skellington to appreciate a neighbor’s Halloween when taking the kids trick-or-treating.

What the city is really discussing – and things are in the pretty early stages at this point – are things that stay up year-round when they really shouldn’t. We’re talking, for the most part, about the giant skeletons that, once installed, stand in front yards all year. We can understand why some neighbors would get tired of looking at them.

It’s impossible to advocate for or against an ordinance with nothing public to review. We would hope that whatever the city proposes is narrowly tailored so that it doesn’t potentially take away from some of the small-town charm that comes with the holiday seasons. For those who haven’t noticed, fewer people decorate for the holidays now than they used to. The city also needs to be careful not to create First Amendment concerns if the ordinance begins requiring code officers to wade into content restrictions on certain types of flags or decorations that some find distasteful for the opinion they express. Ordinances like this can tread into complicated territory depending on how they are written.

We understand why many people would argue some neighbors need to get a life. That comment popped up a few hundred times on social media last week, as did the general thought that the council should focus on bigger issues facing the city. Those people, we would note, have obviously never seen the volume of neighborhood complaints just like this one that end up in a City Council members’ email or voicemail. The majority of issues brought to a council member have less to do with fire department staffing, public works projects or police call response times than they do with requests for new street lights, the placement of a soccer league’s porta potties, someone using their driveway as neighborhood garage or, yes, someone’s giant skeleton that has stayed up all year. This is local governance, contrary to what one sees in textbooks or television shows.

The council can, and we believe will, find a middle ground on this minor yet obviously hot-button issue that satisfies most city residents.