Tuesday, October 25, 2016

Tuesday, November 1st, 5:30 at Lake Worth City Hall (and don't forget Workshop next Thursday at our Casino)

Over 4,000 new LED street lights. This makes us nationally-recognized Dark Skies compliant as well. Two days later, on Thursday at 6:00 is a very important Commission Workshop to deal with all those problems. Use this link for meeting details.

Lake Worth is also the first municipality in the State of Florida to receive approval to install these new LED lights (2,700k) on FDOT controlled roadways within the City.

However, if you recall, it was Commissioner Chris McVoy, PhD who suggested that our new LED street lights would make people sick and need to be hospitalized. Another former commissioner chimed in saying the these new lights would distract drivers, careening into buildings and running over people. All complete nonsense, of course.

The real issue is Mayor Pam Triolo, City Manager Michael Bornstein, the majority on the City Commission, staff, et al. came up with this plan (use this link to the City's website) and others like McVoy didn't—even though he and his cohorts back in 2009/2010 had plenty of opportunity and then squandered it on mistakes at the Casino at the Beach. We're still paying the price for all those planning errors.

On the issue of street lighting and public safety, an email I received:

"I was reading this piece from IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers Spectrum (of which I was a long time member) recently about cities converting to LED lighting. It’s a very pleasant non-technical read. After reading it one can readily conclude that Lake Worth did a great job of selecting and implementing our new LED street lighting system. Job well done to all involved."

An excerpt from the article (see link in paragraph above):

     "Most of us who grew up with streetlights tended to think of them as uninteresting utilitarian objects, when we thought of them at all. The turbulent early years of LED lighting have forced us to take another look at what nighttime lighting could—and should—be. Because of that, the future looks brighter, and it will also be much easier on the eye."