Fairbanks street lights a drain on city finances
Published Wednesday, June 25, 2008
Digg
del.icio.us
Facebook
Mixx
Reddit
Stumble It!FAIRBANKS — The city could be venturing to the dark side if the force — the energy task force, that is — decides to cut the lights around town.
On Tuesday afternoon, city engineer Mike Schmetzer shed light on the city’s electricity costs. And the dark reality is that more than 60 percent of the city’s electricity bill comes from street lights.
The city has 2,646 street lights that cost $200 a piece to operate. Of the $880,000 the city spent on electricity, $535,000 went to street lights.
Schmetzer and the energy task force went into combat mode and tried to figure out just how the city can tighten the use of electricity.
Schmetzer mapped out every single street light within city limits to evaluate the need of light in certain areas.
Council representative Tonya Brown and Schmetzer plan to drive through town to identify key intersections and areas where lights should be kept on as well.
“Just like homeowners are encouraged to turn off lights when leaving the room, so should the city turn off the street lights that seem inefficient,” Brown said.
The task force discussed many different ideas such as installing timers on street lights.
Currently, lights operate on photo cells that turn on or off depending on the darkness outside regardless of the time of day.
The group would also like to change to more energy-efficient bulbs, called LED lights.
“We could just change all the 400 watt bulbs to 150 watt, too” Phillips said.
“The bottom line is we need to utilize critical street lights at intersections, school routes and bus stops, among others and minimize local street lighting,” Schmetzer said.
Police Chief Dan Hoffman has expressed his opinion about the importance of street lights for crime prevention and asked the group to be considerate of certain areas around town.
“There is a definitive and well-established relationship between the availability of light and accompanying crime,” Hoffman said. “There’s no easy answer here,” he said.
And the answer doesn’t reflect on street lights alone.
Each member of the task force brought up a different energy drain on the city.
Schmetzer’s report informed the group that head bolt heater outlets in city parking lots have been left on and running during the summer months.
“Even though cars aren’t plugged in during the summer, the head bolts are still draining electricity and costing the city about $2,000 a year,” Schmetzer said.
Besides lighting and parking outlets, City Hall has been historically one of the biggest drains on the city energy budget.
Phil Sanders, facility manager, hired an auditor to evaluate City Hall and the results made it clear that the building needs another make-over. The audit came back showing efficiency at only 51 percent, giving it just a two-star rating.
Sanders is moving forward with upgrading windows in the north tower and removing the majority of the building’s basement windows and remodeling the front door. All three items were scored lowest on the energy rating.
“We’ve got our work cut out for us if we want to make headway by winter, but I think the majority of our effort is pretty simple,” Sanders said. “We just need to cut back and tighten up,” he said.
Tightening up may also involve foregoing Christmas lights around the city.
“I just don’t see how we can justify hanging Christmas lights when we’re trying to cut back,” Brown said.
So far the group is still at a brainstorming stage but as energy costs continue to rise, the city will be aiming to complete most projects before winter arrives.
Community Discussion
Newsminer.com doesn't necessarily condone the comments here, nor does it review every post. Read our full user's agreement.
I think it would be an excellent idea to switch to LED lights before we start shutting off streetlights. I'm also glad to see the city realizes that hanging up holiday lights should be one of the first things to go. As for the head bolts, they should be on their own circuits, if they are it should be fairly simple to flip the breakers for them off.
I totally understand wanting to cut streetlights. Will my street light be put out? 2 years ago in the winter, the bulb blew out, and that was a very dark 2 weeks til the city replaced it. It was pretty scary, as I live in a neighborhood with a lot of theft and hooligans. I dont think that the city council members should be the ones choosing which ones stay on or go out. They would see "my" light on a map and put it out, not realizing that the woods across the street, or the problem makers in the neighborhood would cause me and others a lot of grief. Of course, the lights near their houses would stay on, right? Cutting the hours they are on would be great though, as I see them on all the time when its light out still.
What about putting essential lights on solar power, and non essential lights can have motion sensors. If someone walks or drives down a street, the light will stay on for 30 seconds (or whatever the city decides).
Can we ask our Athabascan gwich'in brothers to help with lights from their smoke signal fires this winter?
Jeez, I already thought Strle was a master/mistress of the dark side of the Force.
Solar powered lights.
Genius.
Why didn't I think of that? Geez.
How does a headbolt drain power if there's nothing plugged in to it?
Just turn off the lights, and let everyone leave. With fuel costs soaring through the roof and legislator's not doing anything, make me wonder who's oil is it anyway. Thought it was OURS
Those photo cells turn the lights on hours before it gets dark in the afternoon and turns them off hours after they are needed in the morning. It would be nice to get photo cells on those lights that are set to turn the lights on later in the afternoon and turn them off earlier in the morning.
Switching to LED is a fantastic idea - even if all current lights remained lit for the same period of time, that in itself would cut the $535,000 spent last year on light electricity to about $200,000. Combine that with reduced hours and the savings just go up.
Cutting light near houses and businesses should be the last to go in consideration of local crime.
Shutting off street lights on the roadways would make night driving far more comfortable. It might even encourage the clueless and forgetful among us to turn on their headlights....
Flying back to town at 1AM I was totally amazed how many street and parking lot lights were on during the longest days of the year.
Will the last one leaving town please turn off the lights....
Yea, LED lighting is here, just check out the prices, it would cost MILLIONS to replace the street lights with them.. bad idea. except for China, who makes 90% of them. Just like the "mercury/neon" that will be LAW soon,, watch the link
http://youtube.com/watch?v=e-LOtKIIKcg
Back in the pre-pipeline days there was a popular bumper sticker, "Let the b------- freeze in the dark". How ironic that it might end up us being the b------- freezing in the dark.
Solar powered street lights in Fairbanks in the winter. Brilliant! Gotta love it.
Unless something has changed, most street lights are not metered but billed on a flat rate. Someone at the City should review that with GVEA since changing the usage wouldn't make any difference in the bill if this is still the case.
Solar power is useless - think about it. We use street lights during the winter. It is dark in the winter - hence not enough sun to power solar power.
Haha, terribletowel you beat me to the punch... solar power in the winter is a retarded idea.
On a lighter note, they could reset the sensitivity of the photo cells that automatically turn on the lights so they don't come on as much. The street light by my house stays on all night even though its bright enough to play catch with a football in the streets.
I'm glad to see the city is looking at energy usage. There is more efficient street lighting available. I'm not sure how the system works, but maybe the City can tap into some sort of grant program to offset replacement costs and change out some of those lights to ones that are both energy efficient and reduce 'light polution'. I've read about communities that changed out their fixtures so residents could better see the night sky.
-RK
Another reason not to live in the city. How many of you living in the city realize most of the people living in the borough don't have street lights. Many of the main roads around the city are state operated roads and the state foots the bill. The mayor has you you city folks scared again. aframe get a gun if you're that afraid of living without a street light in your neighborhood. Smith and Wesson make wonderful company and are great at getting rid of unwelcome guest.
For clarification, the Energy Task Force will complete a report with cost saving recommendations for the City Mayor and Council to decide upon which, if any, future cost savings measures will be implemented.
To provide further clarification, there was some limited electrical usage from head bolt heater outlets during peak summer months. While not a significant cost impact, from a functionality perspective in the future all head bolt heater outlets will be operated on a cycle during winter months and turned off during summer months, neither of which has been done in recent years.
The City Engineering/Public Works Department and the Task Force is looking closely at all aspects of the street lighting system, including the flat-rate fee structure, the numerous accounts that should be consolidated, future implementation of LED lighting, quality of life issues, and potential crime impacts with input from FPD, before finalizing our report.
Mike Schmetzer
City Engineer/Public Works Director
Mike Schmetzer tell the public which streets the city pays for and which the State pays for.
A little hardship is a good way to restore a little commonsense and ingenuity. I'm curious to see all the things we as individuals and a society can come up with.
As for the city it can save money by taking the company car away from its City inspectors who use them to commute to homes far outside the city. Nothing personal but their is a city inspector that lives in a very nice home up on Moose Mtn and he commutes everyday (for at least the last 5 yrs) with his official city truck. That might make sense if he were some sort of borough inspector who is expected to be on call for the Moose Mtn/Goldstream area in which case it would be cheaper to not have drive all the way out from town but I can't see why the city and its tax payers are paying for his commute form far outside city limits to a CITY inspector job.
As for street lights, ANC is switching to Compact Fluorescent bulbs and expect this to pay for itself within a few years. Would this work up here or is it too cold? As for the upfront costs the state could give the city a low interest LOAN.
I have guns, but still afraid of thugs. Please keep my light on? I have experienced life without it!
How about we duct tape the thugs to the street lights and make them hold candles instead?
Put the street lights on timers, change the system to LED bulbs, but has the city realized that the street lights in half the neighborhoods are off or blown out anyway? I live downtown and I know that I call every winter about our street lights being off and the neighborhood being pitch black. Everyone in the world is about saving energy right now, and I do think that there are modifications that could and SHOULD be made, but making citizens feel uneasy or unsafe in their own neighborhoods really shouldn't be the "fix all" for the energy crisis. Keep brainstorming, and I'm sure you'll come up with some better ideas.
"As for the city it can save money by taking the company car away from its City inspectors who use them to commute to homes far outside the city."
GVEA needs to do the same thing. I passed a GVEA company car headed towards Delta on my way back from Quartz Lake this past weekend. How much of their "fuel surcharge" is going to put gas in vehicles that are NOT used in the repair and/or installation of new lines or existing equipment?
I'll still puzzled as to how headbolts consume power when there's nothing plugged in to them.
the headbolts don't consume any power, they can't... so maybe people are plugging extraneous crap into them?
Post a comment
Commenting requires registration.