City Council to vote on streetlight proposal
City plans public demonstrations of varying light temperatures to seek broad public input
The Santa Fe City Council is scheduled to vote Wednesday on a contract to convert more than 2,000 of the city’s streetlights to energy-efficient bulbs, part of the city’s plan to go carbon neutral by 2040.
The contract will allow the city to convert 2,060 streetlights owned by Public Service Company of New Mexico to LED bulbs.
The city will pay $421,185 to convert the lights.
According to a city memo, the city currently pays about $620,000 per year for maintenance and electricity for all 5,500 lights in Santa Fe.
The city also pays PNM on average $300,000 a year for “non-routine” maintenance on aging infrastructure.
The city already agreed to move forward on preliminary plans to convert about 3,500 streetlights across the city last month.
The bulbs are expected to reduce energy usage by 50 percent to 60 percent and save the city $550,000 in electricity bills per year. A full conversion will take nine months.
The city currently uses high-pressure sodium lights, which according to Public Works Director Regina Wheeler have a high failure rate and higher rate of energy use.
The color temperature of the new lights, measured in kelvins, has yet to be finalized.
The city has discussed installing lights on residential streets at 3,000 kelvins, with 4,000 kelvins on main thoroughfares. The city also noted streets maintained by the state Department of Transportation are required to have lights between 4,000 and 4,500 kelvins.
Some dark sky advocates have raised concerns that converting streetlights at a higher kelvin would affect Santa Fe’s night skies and residents’ sleeping patterns.
The city plans to schedule a series of public demonstration to discuss the overall kelvin of the lights.
Wheeler said the city is filling out seats on a steering
committee that will meet to learn the details of the project, get additional information and provide feedback.
Public outreach and presentations are scheduled to begin in mid-April, Wheeler said, including lighting demonstrations at four different locations across the city — Airport Road, Frenchy’s Field on Agua Fría Street, Jaguar Drive in Tierra Contenta and St. Michael’s Drive.
The feedback will inform both the PNM conversion and a contractor’s part of the conversion project.
“These four areas will be set up to tell a story and have an experience,” Wheeler said. “So, it’s not just a light somewhere, it’s probably going to a be a series of lights with different colors, different wattage, so people will be able to differentiate between them. It’s a designed experience so people can gauge the different characteristics of the lights.”
Wheeler said the city has received input from members of the dark skies community and intends to work with the nonprofit International Dark-Sky Association on its lighting proposal, but added that the outreach is designed to bring in more opinions from others.
“We are not making any decisions until we hear from more people than just the dark sky people, who is all we have heard from so far,” Wheeler said.
The City Council is expected to take in recommendations and vote on a specific design in May.