ATTLEBORO - It's beginning to look, well, a little like Christmas - finally.

A raft of minor problems combined to put the city's downtown decorations behind schedule, and forced the elimination of some, making this year's light display later and dimmer, said parks Superintendent Sonny Almeida Wednesday.

The veteran city employee who's seen many Christmas pasts, acknowledged that decorating didn't run as smooth as Santa's sleigh this year.

Bad planning, bad equipment and bad luck delayed lighting the city, but the job is done now about a week late.

"We fell apart this year," said a clearly pooped Almeida. Almeida was tired from a late night of helping his crew deck the trees on the common with 750 new, bright, white lights Tuesday.

The job, completed in cold weather, took until 10 p.m.

"This was a bad year. We didn't know what we had to work with. We had broken wires and bad plugs," said Almeida. "But we've done the best we could."

And advance planning wasn't the greatest, he said.

"And maybe I didn't communicate as well as I could have with the mayor," Almeida said.

By contrast, the light display at LaSalette Shrine went on line Thanksgiving night and sister city Taunton lighted up on Dec. 2, which was one day late because of bad weather.

But Attleboro had its own set of problems.

Almeida said National Grid, the city's electric utility, prohibited the use of its utility poles for the city's annual lighted wreaths without a permit. In addition, the city would have to meet strict installation requirements, which were not mandated by former owner of the poles, Massachusetts Electric, said Almeida.

One of those requirements limits wreath weight to five pounds. The city's weigh 35 pounds.

A National Grid official said the city was in effect stealing electricity with the wreaths because their electric usage wasn't figured into city bills, Almeida said. That put an end to wreaths on the 40 downtown poles for this year, he said.

In addition, strings of lights used to decorate the trees on the common turned out to be too old for use, forcing the city to buy new lights at the last moment.

And the bucket truck city elves use to install the lights was out of commission with bad brakes.

Then the usual driver was out sick and the worker who usually strung the lights was retired, Almeida said.

Plans had turned into the nightmare before Christmas.

The Riverwalk was done and Fisk Square was done, but on Tuesday, the common and its big trees remained dark.

A call from Mayor Kevin Dumas to the city's highway garage got the truck repair speeded up, but completion of the lights display was days behind schedule, Almeida said.

So the mayor asked Almeida and his crew to stay on duty and get the lights glowing.

With Christmas present being a little dimmer than they would like, city officials are moving to make Christmas future much brighter.

Dumas and Almeida aim to set up a committee early next year to plan better and more timely decorations for next year.

"I don't want to do this again," said Almeida adding that Dumas is aiming for big improvements. "He wants to expand the decorations and light them up nice."

Dumas was in Washington, D.C. at a conference and was unavailable for comment.

GEORGE W. RHODES can be reached at 508-236-0432 or at grhodes@thesunchronicle.com.