After nearly two years of living in the shadows, Marysville residents will soon have their street lights restored.
In an effort to make the city eligible for a California Energy Commission grant, the City Council voted Tuesday for a $5,700 budget allotment for restoration of about 500 street lights.
The lights were turned off in the summer of 2010 to save the city money.
"Our citizens have really worked hard with us and have put up with darkened streets for too long," said Mayor Bill Harris.
The lights are expected to come back on before early May. The move will allow use of $447,790 in energy commission grant funds to retrofit most of the Marysville's street lights with more efficient and cost-effective LED fixtures.
LED lighting uses about half the energy as conventional light fixtures and last more than five times longer, according to George Musallam, Yuba City's director of public works and utilities. Yuba City also has a program in place to convert its street lights to LED.
A $1.35 million loan from the California Energy Commission will allow roughly 3,500 streetlights owned by Yuba City to be replaced with the new fixtures.
The city will use savings in energy costs to repay the loan over 11 years, Musallam said.
"After that, all the savings will be ours," he said. "It's a really good deal."
Marysville began its LED replacement project in the fall of 2010 with 176 streetlight conversions.
About 1,000 fixtures have yet to be replaced. The project does not include lights on highways 20 and 70, which are managed by Caltrans.
Councilman Dale Whitmore took issue on Tuesday with the $5,700 necessary to restore Marysville's lights prior to conversion.
"Couldn't we just leave the lights off during those two months and save money?" he said.
"I don't see why we should wait," said Councilwoman Christina Billeci, who echoed Harris' point about Marysville residents tolerating dark streets.
The tall white lights that illuminate the mile-long River Walk that hugs the St. Clair River in Marysville will be spruced up this summer.
At the March 26 city council meeting, Councilman Duke Dunn said that he had received a few phone calls from residents inquiring about the condition of the lamps.
"They're rusty," said Department of Public Works Supervisor Barry Kreiner. "It was on my list of things to do last fall, but I couldn't get to it."
Once the DPW's seven summer workers are back in the field, Kreiner plans to have them take a power wheel to the lamp poles, prime them and paint them.
"It's just surface rust, nothing structural," said Kreiner.
Kreiner also mentioned the possibility of upgrading the fixtures.
"Those lights draw a lot of power and cost the city $10,000 last year," Kreiner said. "I talked to the manufacturer and they make a retro-fit for a LED light."
LED is an acronym for light-emitting diode, a semiconductor light source producing electroluminescence.
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