Myrtle Creek wants to shut off street lights to save money
By KPIC-TV Staff
Multimedia
MYRTLE CREEK, Ore. - The city of Myrtle Creek may soon be turning off many of its street lights to save money. The city wants to shut off about half the nearly 300 lights, and use the money it saves, to do street maintenance. City manger Aaron Cubic said they think the city can save about $20,000 a year, and that would be a big boost to help repair streets that have deteriorated in recent years. "The city's need for cost reduction and it's interest in energy and resource conservation have led the city to examine its street light policy and programs," said Cubic. "An analysis of the program has shown numerous opportunities for the city to save money and energy and make the distribution of our street light services more equitable throughout the community," he said. Cubic said there has been concern about the number of lights that will be shut off, but he said they will still have adequate lighting on the streets. "One of the concerns was we've been saying 50% of our street lights may be turned off if we adopt this policy," said Cubic. "Well that sounds like an awful lot, 50% of your street lights. We have 297 street lights within the city of Myrtle Creek and we're proposing to turn off 147 of those street lights so it is quite a bit." Cubic said, however, the city has a number of mid-block lights and they are proposing to only turn off those. All of the intersections would still be lighted, and with the block sizes in Myrtle Creek, said Cubic, that will still keep the streets pretty bright. If the council passes the ordinance at their February meeting, the new policy could go into affect by late February or early March. They would start turning off lights shortly after that. |
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February 9, 2012
- Roseburg, Oregon
