Council asked to turn on lights

SOUTH PORTLAND — While South Portland sees the value of LED lights, promising to equip Ocean Street with them following this summer’s reconstruction project, the power-saving system will not be pressed into service to restore street lights doused elsewhere as a cost-savings measure.

That has some residents seeing red, claiming that the city is putting them at risk. Worse, they say, is the city’s apparent refusal to turn any lights back on, or to even consider LED lighting as an alternative.

“The incline of the street, without a streetlight, makes it very difficult for motorist to see pedestrians,” said Stephanie Baird, a resident of Smith Street, where a streetlight was recently darkened as a cost-savings measure. “We feel it’s putting some of our walkers at risk.”

In November, after a summer-long notice and appeal process, city councilors voted to shut 184 streetlights, of 225 initially proposed. The move followed a similar action in 2010, when 207 lights were turned off. Although the 2010 change only saved money in theory – a CMP rate hike caused the city to pay $5,000 more than in 2009, despite having fewer lights – Finance Director Greg L’Heureux said the savings are real this go round.

In a recent email, L’Heureux said South Portland saved $1,738 in February thanks to the shutoff. That equates to $20,856 for the year, he said, adding that the city also recently got a “very favorable decrease” in electricity costs from Maine Power Options. However, there also was another rate increase on power delivery from Central Maine Power. All told, said L’Heureux, the net result is a $13,000 drop in the amount budgeted for streetlights next year, to $320,000.

At Monday’s City Council meeting, Baird made a second appearance to protest the shutdown of a light on her street. At the March 5 council meeting, Baird said the lights had only gone out within the week. Last fall, Baird’s was one of 179 individual appeals considered on 79 different streetlights. Of those, 17 of those lights were given a reprieve, based solely, Councilor Rosemarie De Angelis said, on the distance between lights.

Baird said that because she never heard anything from the ad hoc committee called to hear the appeals, and because the light did not go out, she’d initially assumed she’d won her fight. L’Heureux said CMP was notified as soon as the final list of cuts was made in November and the city stopped getting billed 30 days thereafter, even though, in some cases, the lights were not shut down until late February.

Claiming to speak for her neighbors, Baird said they feel unsafe, given the blackened light in question is at the bottom of the hill at the Smith Street intersection with Preble Street, near a cemetery where there are no sidewalks and little ambient light from nearby homes.

Baird asked councilors to consider LED lighting, which, though expensive to install, use about one-third the energy of conventional streetlights. Failing any response to that request, Baird asked what form she and her neighbors could submit to have their light reconsidered.

“How do we get out lights turned back on so people feel safe?” she asked.

City Manager Jim Gailey said there is no process, as the final decision has been made.

“The process that unfolded was quite extensive,” he said at the March 5 meeting. “Staff feels as though notification was out there and all appeals were considered. So, there’s really not going to be a reconsideration of whether lights should be turned back on. It would hurt the process if we start five months later turning back on streetlights.”

“Again, there was an exhaustive process,” Gailey repeated when Baird tried again March 19. “I feel as though a thorough process was undertaken with numerous meetings over several months. We’re at a point now where CMP has removed those lights from those telephone poles.”

After the meeting, Baird vowed to rally her neighbors and to keep trying.

“Sometimes you just need to take a second look,” she said, suggesting that councilors not merely measure the distance between poles, but actually visit her street after dark.