The future looks well-lit for the city of Sylvania.
Among several projects lined up in its 2023 budget is converting Sylvania’s street lights to use LED bulbs.
According to a statement from Sylvania’s Department of Public Service, the conversion to light-emitting diodes will cover all 1,650 lamps in the city, replacing mercury vapor and sodium vapor lamps now in use.
Toledo Edison, which will install the new lamps, estimates the capital cost at $342,000, but said that will be paid back in about 4.5 years because the LEDs will cost the city $77,000 less per year for electricity.
The utility company gave the city several options for replacing the lamps, including on a case-by-case basis as the old ones fail or on a five-year schedule. But Sylvania City Council is shooting for the third option, under which Toledo Edison would replace them all right away.
“We have the fund balance available,” Kevin Aller, city director of public service, said during a Nov. 7 council meeting.
Exactly what needs to be replaced at a given location depends on the lighting fixtures involved, Mr. Aller said.
“There are maybe some of them that we want replaced as part of the project,” he said regarding the light assemblies or poles themselves. “That will be some give and take with Edison, but there is no sense on putting a new fixture on a pole that is broken.”
Dani Fuller, owner of Fuller Art House at 5679 Main St., said Friday she hopes the lighting project is part of a broader initiative to redo the downtown streetscape and not a one-off project.
“I heard the city was planning on redoing the whole streetscape by 2025,” said Ms. Fuller, referring to what Sylvania has called the Downtown Transportation Improvements Project, which held initial stakeholder meetings in August.
“I would be an advocate for not doing much to downtown until they have a plan for what they are actually going to do moving forward. If they are going to switch out the lighting and then redo everything in two years, is that a good use of time and money?” she said. “I feel like sometimes things get done that we have to redo later because the plan of the future was not considered.”
Still, Ms. Fuller said that she is looking forward to the project being completed.
“Of course, better lighting is a benefit to everyone,” she said.
Douglas Haynam, a city councilman, agreed, noting that the project — which follows Toledo’s completion last year of its own LED streetlight conversion — will only improve Sylvanians’ quality of life.
“This has been in the works for a while,” Mr. Haynam said Friday. “Edison will be doing that work. There is a capital cost to us and after our initial investment Edison will maintain them indefinitely.
“It is going to provide higher quality light and better directional light,” he said. “The life of these lights will also provide a more consistent performance of our street lights than the existing incandescent bulbs do. These bulbs are supposed to have a 15 year life. The way it works now is that when a lightbulb burns out, we call Edison and they eventually get around to changing it, but now I do not think we will have as many failed lights at any given time.”
Mr. Haynam said that the city is still working with Toledo Edison on when exactly the lights’ replacement will begin, but such a project is just part of council’s duty to Sylvania’s citizens.
“It is part of the package of city services that my neighbors have come to expect from the city,” he said. “We want to provide those services in a way that is consistent, efficient, and gets the job done.”
First Published November 18, 2022, 10:11 p.m.
