BOWDEN - Town councillor Kerry Kelm has received complaints from citizens that street lights in the community don't provide enough light.
So at his suggestion, council has asked representatives of FortisAlberta to come to a meeting to discuss the problem and see what can be done to solve it.
Council passed a motion to that effect during a recent meeting.
Fortis officials say that meeting is set for July 23. Stan Orlesky, the company's stakeholder relations manager, is slated to attend.
Kelm said some residents approached him after a town meeting to complain about the street lights.
He agreed with them.
"Our citizens are complaining that, you know, they walk down the sidewalk, they're in the dark. And, you know, you drive by, you've got that spotlight, it hits your windshield. It's like, 'whoa, there it's bright,' and then it's gone and it's dark again," Kelm said.
"That's in the middle of the road where it's shiny. You get out onto the sidewalk and it's dark. They don't feel safe walking around in the dark."
Coun. Sandy Gamble has heard similar complaints in other towns.
She said town officials should make sure their strategic plan includes enough street lights and the ability to install more if needed.
Mayor Robb Stuart said maybe the best thing to do is a complete evaluation of all street lights in town.
Another suggestion, Kelm said, would be to talk to other companies that provide street lighting.
"They can give you completely different spheres of light and shapes of light, depending on what you need," he said. "We don't need just a spotlight, because cars have headlights; they don't need to see that one spot in the road."
In November 2016, Bowden town council endorsed a pitch by Orlesky to replace street lights with new, more efficient LED street lights.
During that meeting, Orlesky said 148 lights in Bowden would be changed under the program. He projected they could save the town $5.70 per light per year.
"When LED was first presented to us, 'oh, sounds great,' right? Like, you're going to lose a little bit of light but it wouldn't be shining up in the sky," Mayor Robb Stuart said last month.
"It sounded like 10 per cent less on the ground and 80 per cent less in the sky and that hasn't been true, right?"
Kelm said there should be a way to make the lights the town currently has cover a bigger area, rather than having to install more of them.
Stuart said councillors were told earlier they could increase the voltage of the new lights. However, he said, "that kind of defeats the purpose of LED," because the town would have to pay more for that increased use of power.
But because they're energy-efficient lights, the cost may not rise much, Kelm and Coun. Randy Brown said.
Coun. Paul Webb sparked some laughter by suggesting that to bring the point home, council could hold the meeting with Orlesky after dark, "which would be pretty late now."
