Nice weather and generous people have combined to make 2011 Rotary Lights best year ever. Founder Pat Stephens said without the last few days’ final numbers counted, he’s already seen bigger numbers than in past years.

“We certainly had our best year ever in the park in terms of food collection and so on. Our monetary donations are 20 percent higher and our food collections are off the charts. We’re at 225,000 (nonperishable food items),” he said and the best the fundraiser has ever done before this is 206,000 food items.

Good weather is partly to thank for that, he said, with temperate weather and little snow. That made it easy not only to drive through the park, Stephens said, but to walk through the park, which many people did.

“The community response never ceases to amaze me. We had a little help from Mother Nature, but we like to think it has to do with the beauty of the display, too.”

That beauty came from 2.6 million lights that volunteers worked on for a couple of months. Now that it’s officially 2012, those volunteers will descend on the park to take everything down in four days, Stephens said.

Though there are no plans to increase the amount of lights in the park, there are always plans to make improvements, Stephens said.