can of worms: wonderful or wasteful?

I don't know how many of you visit the Legislative Grounds as an annual thing, but it was never very high on my list of great places to go. Besides it being what I feel is a ginormous waste of taxpayer dollars and an unnecessary addition to our carbon footprint, it looks, quite frankly, tacky.

My sister is in town and wanted to go - she hasn't been in about 16 years - and was as underwhelmed as we were when we thought we should check it out a few years ago, and scratched it off our annual 'must-see-and-do' list. Now, I can understand having a designated area being lit up (like the ice sculpture one above) or even a magical trail of lights leading from the parking lot to the skating rink or something, but mostly it looks like WalMart threw up all over the trees.

I admit, they make for some funky background effects, but honestly, it's overkill. And Tacky. I suppose if they had done the entire place up in white lights instead of the abrasive multicoloured LED strings they upgraded to a few years back it might not be so offensive, even if it's still wasteful. (I tried to find the budget, but I believe the annual cost is a couple hundred thousand dollars.) At least Bright Nights collects food for the Food Bank and gets their event sponsored, while Candycane Lane I'm kind of torn on - they get a break on their power bill to run that perversion of Christmas spirit, but again, at least they accept donations for charity.

What do you think? Is the Legislature's lighting design a wonderful part of our city's winterscape (if you aren't from Edmonton, feel free to comment on your municipality or your own provincial capital...) or it is just an excessively flashy display that wastes taxpayer dollars?

(I just put this last picture in because I was farting around with long exposures in the car and thought this one was particularly fun...)