Friday, April 29, 2011

Scene Around Town: Your tax dollars at work

A reader shot this photo this morning of electric crews installing new energy efficient fixtures on the lamp posts on Xenia Avenue.

Reader submitted.
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7 comments:

Les Groby said...

Yes, they're replacing good, working street lights with new ones, with no assurance that the energy savings will pay for the lost service life of the old lights. The responsible thing would have been to replace the lights with more efficient new ones as they failed, unless it could be calculated that we would come out ahead by replacing working lights early. Another example of Village Council making decisions based on ideology, rather than being practical and exercising good stewardship of our tax dollars.

April 29, 2011 at 10:28 PM
Anonymous said...

In the interest of getting the facts right, your tax dollars are not what supports the work of the electric crew. The electric crew is paid from "enterprise" accounts, which are funded by your utility payments. The Village is required to keep these monies separate.

April 30, 2011 at 9:24 AM
Judith Hempfling said...

The Village is replacing good working lights because it has been calculated that we would save money on energy costs as well as reduce our carbon footprint. Next time, why not seek out the facts before publicly criticizing.

Judith Hempfling
Village Council

April 30, 2011 at 3:45 PM
Mek Logan said...

Les, it actually *is* cheaper to replace lights as soon as possible -- whether the old incandescent bulbs in your house or those big street lights. Every hour the old ones run is another hour you are paying for more power -- the new bulbs (obviously!) do not start paying for themselves until they're installed.

In addition, speaking as a former industrial electrical technician, it is significantly more efficient to replace all the lights at once, rather than one at a time -- imagine if you had to go get a ladder, replace a hard-to-reach bulb, then put the ladder away, until the next hard-to-reach bulb burns out. It's a much better idea to replace all those bulbs while you have the ladder out. I've been involved in quite a few re-lamping jobs, and it's always been every lamp in the area.

There is also a certain advantage to having new lamps, period -- they are more likely to keep working, meaning there will be fewer outages -- if the light is worth having at all, having it working must also provide some benefit.

Finally, it looks like you are underestimating the cost of power vs. cost of purchase. A $300 1kw industrial lamp uses one KW/H every hour it's on -- about ten cents per hour, so a dollar every 10 hours, $10 in 100 hours (~4 days if on continuously) . . . so that $300 bulb slurps up $300 in power about every 4 months! I don't know the actual dollar values of these new lamps, but payback is generally relatively quick on these big lamps -- even saving a small amount is best done immediately.

April 30, 2011 at 6:53 PM
Les Groby said...

So, you're saying that it's okay for Council to waste money from the electric fund? Anyway, the new lights were paid for from the "energy conservation" allocation in the general fund, not from the electric fund.

You're only half right about the enterprise funds being kept seperate. Money can't be transferred out of an enterprise fund for other purposes, but money from general fund revenues can be transferred TO an enterprise fund.

April 30, 2011 at 6:58 PM
Les Groby said...

@Judith
Where can I get a copy of the calculation showing that the total cost of replacing working street lights, including the value of the lost service life of the old lights, installation costs, and the cost of the new fixtures and lamps, would be exceeded by the energy savings over the life of the new lamps? Obviously, "sav(ing) money on energy costs" is not the whole picture, and "reduc(ing) our carbon footprint" is, as I said, an extraneous ideological motive. I do try to stay informed, but I have not seen this information presented publicly. The last time this project was mentioned at a Council meeting was back in the fall when Mr. Cundiff was still unsure whether to request bids for installation or have the Village crew install them.

May 1, 2011 at 5:56 PM
Judith Hempfling said...

Les,

The Energy Board, particularly Reggie Stratton and Jerry Papania did the calculations. Send your request for information on this to the Clerk of Council and she can forward it to them. The information was presented to Council when the Board first recommended the street light replacements as both a money saver and an environmentally positive action.

You can always email the Clerk if you have questions or concerns, and we will try to get the information to you. I'm sure you and I will not always agree, but I would like to at least have an opportunity to explain our thinking, or my thinking, and share what I believe to be the facts underlying a decision.

If you think those facts are faulty explain. Lets have a debate or conversation rather than put downs.

May 1, 2011 at 10:24 PM

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