Orange County NC Website
from Duke Power's standpoint is something that does not place an undue burden on the <br />consumer and that can be done in an orderly and logical fashion. <br />"You may have a situation, and it could be a municipality or a County agency or private <br />party that has a whole system of lights. One light needs to be replaced. Because it's replaced <br />and does not match the rest of the system, it could impact the, not only the esthetics but the <br />illumination quality of that system. So, it needs to be looked at more carefully than just a <br />wholesale retrofit that gets triggered. I would like to offer you that Duke Power wants to be a <br />good steward of the system that we have, and we want to make sure that we are making the <br />best decisions for the community because we live here, too. I look forward to the day, I live in <br />southern Alamance County, I look forward to the day that Alamance County has some sort of <br />ordinance, again, that is not reactive, but it is proactive. That is what I would hope that Orange <br />County pursues. <br />Barry Jacobs "May I ask Mr. Osborne a question? How much does it cost to install a shield on <br />one of the sodium vapor street lights?" <br />Ron Osborne "When you say a shield, there are two types. There's what's called a nemahead, <br />which is what you see in most people's backyards. The bulb is in there vertically. And for years, <br />things were done like paint the sides of them, or whatever. That's not proved to be very <br />effective. Duke Power ceased the practice of doing that about five years ago. There are <br />probably some of them out there, but it's just not very effective. Cost wise, I don't know what the <br />cost of the actual material would be, but the cost of sending somebody out there and performing <br />the work, especially if that cost is not passed on to somebody, which ultimately it would be, <br />you're probably looking at a minimum of someone in the fifty to the one-hundred dollar range, by <br />the time you assessed it, got the material, went out there and did the work and did everything <br />like that. <br />"Just to give you an example, we have a policy that if we relocate a pole, which involves <br />going out there and having somebody take the fixture off the pale and put it on another pole; this <br />is a flat rate of $268. And sometimes it's less than that and sometimes it's more, but that's kind <br />of an average. So, it's not always cheap. The workforce that we have to utilize, they have to be <br />experts doing what they're doing because moving a light is a relatively simple matter, but <br />they've got to be prepared for all kinds of contingencies, so it's not always that cheap." <br />Barry Jacobs "Thank you. I'd like to request that staff look into that. Piedmont Electric said that <br />they would do that for nothing that the owner of the light had to request it, not the person whose <br />house it's shining into. So, I would be very interested in knowing if it's different by utility or, <br />maybe, I'm not using the correct term of arc, but that was the information that I got, and that <br />would certainly influence whether I thought it was a reasonable thing. If it's going to be less <br />reasonable, then, I might want to consider at least having it done for governmental entities so <br />that their lights are phased out over a period of time, so that, at least the schools and the <br />municipalities and the County phased out the lights that are polluting and take, and again, as we <br />often say, lead by example. <br />Nicole Gooding -Ray "Commissioner Halkiotis." <br />Commissioner Halkiotis "I just wanted to make sure that Craig and the staff were certain to get <br />same of the proposals out to the Chambers of Commerce an both ends of the County. I've been <br />around this County long enough to know that I have seen laser shows for both advertising and <br />entertainment, indoors and outdoors, and I've also seen a lot of search lights, from Chapel Hill <br />