Resolution seeks Canyon Road lights
City advisory committee calls for nearly $1 million to be spent to upgrade streetlamps for public safety
A city advisory committee adopted a resolution Tuesday to revive a project to improve street lighting along Canyon Road, the narrow, historic street popular with tourists where merchants hired a private security firm during the winter holiday season after a series of area muggings.
City Councilor Joseph Maestas, a sponsor of the resolution, has said lights would be replaced by lower profile streetlamps that would be tasteful but whose primary purpose would be to improve public safety.
“The last thing we need is to have a reputation that the city is not safe,” Maestas told the city’s Public Safety Committee on Tuesday.
The proposal calls for giving priority to a project that would spend $160,000 in capital improvement funds for design work in the fiscal year that begins July 1 and another $810,000 to install the lighting.
The lights would be installed from Paseo de Peralta to the Palace Avenue intersection with Canyon Road, much of which is lined with galleries, shops and restaurants.
In addition to crime concerns, the resolution notes that, “inadequate standard street width and inconsistent sidewalks cause pedestrians to walk in the street.”
Maestas in 2014 proposed that the city ask the state Legislature for $350,000 for Canyon Road streetlights.
Members of the Canyon Road Merchants Association told Maestas at a 2013 meeting that they they were using decorative twinkle lights to increase visibility and safety, according to minutes of the meeting. But city staff hasn’t included the Canyon Road lighting project in the city’s list of proposed public works projects.
Maestas’ latest proposal to add the project to the city’s capital improvements plan for the coming fiscal year, which would require approval from the City Council, comes after three muggings in the Canyon Road vicinity in
November and December.
A Colorado man was robbed at gunpoint Nov. 11 on Garcia Street near Canyon Road and a New York City man said he was held up Nov. 16 by a man with a gun at the intersection of Garcia and Canyon.
A local couple said they were robbed Dec. 6 by a knife-wielding man on Canyon.
Contact Uriel Garcia at 505-9863062 or ugarcia@sfnewmexican. com. Follow him on Twitter @ujohnnyg.