The Mayor of Williams Lake agrees that it’s a great idea and money saver to convert City-owned facilities and infrastructure to LED lighting after this week’s committee of the whole council meeting.
Walt Cobb says it’s just of the work that has been going on internally for the last while.
“Last year at UBCM, BC Hydro had an incentive program that may assist in getting in LED lights,” he said.
“We tried to work with that and they weren’t prepared to do what we wanted to do so our only avenue would be for us to take over all of the lights ourselves. Of course, now we’ll have to figure out the cost savings and whether it’s beneficial to us or not but at least it’s a start.”
The City owns 371 streetlights and currently leases 862 existing streetlights from BC Hydro.
Councillor Scott Nelson said in a report the City currently spends approximately $500,000 on electricity costs per year, with costs increasing every year. He said that the conversion to LED lighting will have significant long-term savings and also environmental benefits.
“They did a lot of LED lights when they did the retrofit at the pool,” Cobb said.
“When we talk about City Hall or the airport or the public works yard, we would only make the changes as we need to because you continue to have to replace some of this stuff anyway so as we retrofit or replace what’s there we definitely will look at replacing them with LED lighting.”
The City hopes to convert existing City-owned buildings and infrastructure to LED lighting, including streetlights and crosswalks, with a completion target of 48 months.
“I don’t know about getting everything done by then but I think that was more to get the answers and see because when you look at the long-range plan it would be millions of dollars in savings for the City over a 10 year period so I think it’s imperative that we look at it,” Cobb said.