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	Photo by Bill Green Homeowner Debbie Sachs and two of her neighbors have been told to remove their holiday decorations from their Worman’s Mill homes or face a fine of $25 per day. Purchase this photo

A 10-foot Christmas tree, several Christmas scenes featuring Snoopy and other Peanuts characters and a giraffe bearing gifts are among the seasonal adornments in the front yard of her Stoney Creek Road home. She has a digital "Countdown to Christmas" sign in the window.

Sachs as been decorating in such style for the past six Christmases, she said. This year, for the third year in a row, the Worman's Mill Community Conservancy has ordered her to take the display down.

The conservancy's letters state her display doesn't fit the community's "design concept" and order her to remove it or face an arbitration hearing. In the most recent letter, dated Dec. 19, Sachs was ordered to take down all her decorations by today's date, or face a $25 per day fine. She is also ordered to appear at a hearing before the Conservancy's covenants committee on Dec. 29.

"It's all or nothing," Sachs said. "So I'm not allowed to decorate for Christmas?"

Sachs said she has not responded to any of the letters because they also include instructions to fill out a Property Improvement Request, which residents must submit before making architectural changes to their homes. Since the decorations are temporary, Sachs said she didn't think the letters "had much going for them."

Donald Suhaka, who lives two doors down from Sachs, has received similar letters threatening fines and hearings if he does not remove the 2,500 lights that adorn his bushes and windows.

Suhaka is also no stranger to holiday decorations. Before he moved to Worman's Mill six months ago, he annually installed 60,000 lights on and around his home in Damascus.

When Suhaka was ordered to remove his lights this year, he said he asked 50 neighbors if the lights bothered them, and each one said no. All but two neighbors signed a petition to keep the lights up, and those two said they approved of the lights but did not want to sign their names, he said.

The community's architectural guidelines permit residents to display seasonal decorations without prior approval, and do not restrict the number of lights, brightness, or other such characteristics. But it's not just the architectural guidelines that are in question, said Harvey Alter, chairman of the community's covenants committee.

Alter declined to give specifics about how the displays violate community rules, but said the homeowners have breached the contracts they signed when they bought their homes.

"It's not my taste over your taste, or your taste over my taste; it has nothing to do with taste," he said. "The contract is intended to preserve the character of the community and the investment of the homeowners. These people bought into a planned residential community, and now they don't want it."

Alter said other residents have complained about the displays, and that the homeowners have been invited to meet with the committee but that none of them have done so.