January 16, 2026 — Meeting Transcript

All right. Good afternoon, everybody. We're here for our January 16th discussion session. Matt is going to start us off with a discussion about the downtown streetlights. Thank you, Mayor.

So we're covering two lighting items today. One is a repeat of some things we've discussed before, but this item is a new item, and it's regarding the recent observations we've had completed on our CBD streetscape lights. It's okay if I control it now? Thank you. I want to shrink that down a little bit. Try to move it around as needed. So the lights... Well, we refer to as the CBD Central Business District streetscape lights. There are different varieties you will see listed here. We refer to them basically as singles, duals, quads, and then the cobra head, which is a decorative taller pole. But the singles, dual, quads just refer to the number of lights that are held on each structure. They have slightly different varying heights, kind of from left to right, shortest to tallest. These were installed over... many years starting in early 1995. Sternberg is the manufacturer of these lights. The original lights that were installed in the mid 90s was part of what you will feel referred to as streetscape, which has more components than just lights. There are a number of projects that begin in the mid 90's that included these lights. The originally lights were steel lights, so they're more susceptible to environmental corrosion that we'll show some pictures of here in a bit. There was a transition at a point to aluminum lights, which are a bit more resilient from that aspect. And we expect we will get more life out of those. But we do have a time period from the mid 90s to, we think, close to 2010, maybe mid 2000s, where there was a lot of steel lights. That transition took place. We have not yet exactly nailed down that year of when that happened. But as we began to look, I just wanted to say Rich Wilburn was preparing these, but he was sick today. So I'm trying to figure out what's on the next slide. I apologize. So as we went through the last couple of years, we had a few instances in the downtown where We noticed a few more lights that were either susceptible to wind damage, storms, small hits by vehicles perhaps, or different reasons we were losing more lights than anticipated in the downtown area. So we wanted to take a look at why that was happening. We began to look at a map of The original streetscapes that were installed in the 90s started to correlate it to, that's the oldest poles. There's steel that are out there. Let's get some inspections done and see what we're dealing with so we know how many of these we really need to take down and what our course of action needs to be going forward. So these poles that you're seeing, they're 30 years old. However, in the area, if you've been downtown today, you would notice that some of the buildings around the downtown have third parties throwing down lots of salt just because there might be a little snow. uh, this weekend. And, um, what that can lead to with the rain or the snow is these bases can get a lot of corrosion. The water can get into there and if the base for some reason or another is just, it's just corrosion or the base itself, the concrete was a little bit lower than it should have been. Uh, we start seeing the plate itself where the bolts are rust, or most likely it's the area just above that where the pole base meets that plate, begins to rust, get weak, and it's just easier for it to fail. So we use one of our on-call consultants, TWM, to perform an assessment of 190 poles in the CBD. That included poles that were installed from 1995 to 2000 and are represented by the dots in red that you see on the map to the right. They performed a visual inspection of the pole, the base of the pole, to plate as well as the bolts and the anchor that is in the ground that support the pole. They also utilized instrumentation and devices to check the remaining metal thickness of the pole and determine course of action for those poles. And they compared that against the manufacturer specifications we had for those poles from that time. So the findings from that are shown on the map on the left, and they really broke down into kind of four action categories, if you will. The first is the red, which is a remove immediately. Based off of the observations done, they felt like those polls needed to come down immediately as they presented fail or a risk of failing. The orange category is a repair or remove. And generally, there's not much we can do to repair these and they start to corrode. We have removed all of the remove immediately poles and a portion of the repair or remove poles that we'll talk about a little bit more later. So the repair or remove was a watch it closely and in the near term, they would recommend removing that pole or repairing it. The observed frequently were poles in yellow that showed signs of aging, and they recommended more frequent observations, and then routine observations on the green poles every four to six years as compared to the observed frequently one to two years of the yellow. So I think going into this, what we were seeing with the poles that did fall over the last couple of years That green 116, I was pretty pleased with that. It could have been a lot worse, but it's still a significant number of poles and costs for the ones that we do need to replace.

Yeah.

Thanks. For the ones that say none, not observed, did we thought we have them and they weren't there? Or I'm just trying to understand if none were there, how would we look for them?

Yeah, so in the two major things where those come into play are existing construction projects as well as poles that had maybe fallen previously that we had removed. So you'll notice on the Forsyth curve there, there was some streetscape work going on where there's a concentration. Those were removed as part of that construction project from the time we asked them to do these observations until the time they completed them, those poles went away as part of that project. Well, some things are just naturally renewing themselves through redevelopment, that'd be an example. So as I mentioned, the poles that were the red poles for immediate removal, those have been complete. The additional 16, I think we probably have about half of those complete at this point, if I recall. And then that's the breakdown of the 22 poles for additional inspections in the coming years and then 116 less frequently. So the breakdown on cost, when we look at... Back to this. It's kind of drawing attention. It's not a per-pole detail, but if you look at the bottom right, there's a breakdown of the condition of the pole, the base plate of the pole, or the foundation itself. So there's some instances where... The repair cost is removal of the existing pole, rebuild the base, reinstallation of the existing pole. So that's a lower cost item. But when we would do that, we would retrofit it with LED lights just to bring it up to standard. But the pole itself is a pretty substantial cost. They can range anywhere from $7,500 to $12,000 just for the pole assembly. So when we can reutilize those, we will. The cost we have shown here accounts for those different conditions, whether it be the base that needs replaced both or just the pole. What's not reflected in this $473,000, that does include a contingency amount in there just in case we find more poles or bases needed to be replaced. But we do have eight poles that are in a varying condition, meaning there's not a concern visually from looking at them, but a couple of them look brand new and the rest look in very good condition, but we would need to get an inspection done. But we have those at the... Well, it's really just a construction site now or municipal maintenance facility that we could potentially reuse. That could be a savings of approximately $60,000, just a quick calculation if we are able to reuse those. Mentioned with Bates replacements. Yeah, and that includes all the different light types. I think we only have one of the Cobra head style, but... Yeah, that's kind of the breakdown on the cost. So our next steps, we want to look at The next phase of installation that took place from 2001 to 2005, there's significantly less poles there, about a third of what there was in phase one. So the potential is even less for more failures, hopefully. And we could be getting into that zone where we transition to aluminum. It was a stepped approach. I think when they first went to aluminum, it was only... the singles and the duals. The quads still needed to be steeled to support the weight structure of the additional lights, but then they were able to transition that at some point to aluminum is my understanding. So with those 65, we'll be proposing a project in the future to do inspections on those, but I think the 190 we inspected was approximately $110,000 just for order of magnitude idea. And then we'll identify how we're going to continue these evaluations in future years based off of the recommendations from the engineer. With that, I think that was all I had on that update at this time. Is there any questions I could answer?

Yeah, I guess never working with light poles before, I'm surprised that 30 years is the lifetime of a pole. And I understand the salt and automobiles hitting them and things like that. When you talk about reusing the pole itself with that cost savings, how much more life is left in that pole if you're putting it back up?

So we would look at each location and identify whether that concrete base was below ground, because if that was below ground, whether it settled over time or the sidewalk rise around it, that base held water and that salt would drain in there and hold. So that would artificially age that pole where if it's draining away, it wouldn't. So we'd look at those bases and it may be a situation where we were just going to report a base just to Because we don't want to put a new pole up on a base that's okay, and then it's sunk, and it's going to fail. The mounting bracket is going to fail on the base, and then we have a brand-new pole that fell over. So I talked my way out of your question. I'm sorry.

I guess I'm surprised. That's a good answer because the problem is really the corrosion. and everything at the base of the pole that leads to a lot of this. As we look at new lighting, what type of life expectancy ?

I don't imagine it's going to be significantly longer than that. Just what it experiences in the downtown, it's much different than the residential areas. I mean, I'm sure some residential areas put light amounts of salt down on sidewalks generally, not nowhere near what you'd see around here. There's a lot that comes from the roadway as well as primarily from just third parties that place it down, but to protect the sidewalk because that's something they're required to do by ordinance when it gets slick. But yeah, 30 years, I... It could go longer. We've got some out there that are obviously in the green and are going longer, and we expect more in aggregate, but you're going to have some failures, I think, still sooner like this. We are targeting 30 to 50 years with these type of lights.

Can you go back to the prior slide? Yeah, so the phase one, is that just the 36th? 20 or 38 or whatever, 22 plus six, whatever the numbers was less than 40.

Actually all hundred. You

remove or remove and replace.

Yeah. So all 190 that are in red there were evaluated. Right. And that three to six of those were identified at this point for needing action in the near term or immediately.

Yeah. So on the next slide, the next one, replacement costs for phase one, is that 36 or 190? 36. Okay. That's what I thought. And that's like the infrastructure, the material and the labor.

Yes. So some of those, I don't mean to jump back, but Some of those observed frequently. If that was a base that was combined with a pole that was maybe either also yellow or in some cases green, if we had overlap, we're considering that in this cost. The cost could go down as we dig into a project more, but this should be hopefully the high side of that cost.

Okay. I just want to make sure I understood. Let's go. And that's all. Thanks.

All makes sense to me. I don't know, Matt, is this something where we could either do this or not do it, or we could do this this way or more cheaply, or are you simply reporting that this is what you think needs to be done and this is what it costs? So

the removals are something we need to do. The inspections are something we need do. We've got it identified, and there's always liability with those kind of things. The reinstallation, that's the primary cost. Some of this cost has already been spent just in the removal of those lights that were identified. But the primary cost is the work yet to come. So that would be restoring to light condition, the same light, the same locations that currently exist now. We have not looked at modifying and removing some of these lights. That is an option. You convert a light to a handhold pull box and you're just missing a light in the location. So there's nothing that says that it's a requirement to spend these dollars. This is just the cost to restore it to light condition.

I guess the bottom line, this is what you would recommend as the preferred course of action.

Yeah, for restoring what we've got out there until we would have a plan to change the way we do streetscape lighting, this would be the course to take. All right.

Thanks. Rick, go ahead if you have a question or a thought.

Great. Can you hear me?

Yep.

Wonderful. So I just have two questions. One, is there... As we went through this, did we learn whether or not there's anything we can do to prevent and or extend the life of the existing 116 poles so that this might not happen again? And I guess I'm addressing whatever number of those are probably steel poles rather than aluminum poles.

Yeah, we would expect all of these in this timeframe are all steel poles. And you can see that the good majority of those have performed well and are still holding up. What we've experienced that tends to be the issue is if it's in a location where that base can hold water, Uh, that is usually what leads to it. And it could be that if it was constructed in a way that it was flat with grade and it just debris builds up and it catches and holds water, or it was constructed toward that base was slightly below the sidewalk grade and it pools water into there. It can hold that. um, the salted water and cause corrosion in the base. So that that's the biggest thing that, uh, we learned from, from doing this is ensuring that those bases when constructed in the future, you know, they need to be above ground. We kind of knew that as just going through this process, uh,

you saw it in practice. So that's good to know in terms of new construction. What I was wondering was, you know, is there some kind of extend the life like put an epoxy around the bottom or create a dam of some sort or a sealant? You know, anything just to perhaps mitigate the risk of future corrosion?

There could be something like that in those cases of those 22 yellows. My read of this is those 116 greens, they've been there 30 years and they're not showing any signs of issue. We check with the engineer regarding those 22 yellows, sometimes there is You know, a refinishing of the metal that can be done if you're starting to see signs of corrosion. These lights are powder coated, though, and I would imagine the process of if we were to repowder coat them, we don't have a cost for what that would be to remove that light, have that done. We can see if there's an in-the-field option, but we haven't explored that yet.

Okay. And my last question, I think you may have answered this already, but I just was wondering if we learned anything from the data about, you know, are there certain physical attributes that lent themselves to an increasing risk of corrosion? So you talked about grade. I just wondered like if it's at a corner or some other kind of observations that you might be able to draw from this.

Now, the map you see on the left here, the red dots and the orange dots are scattered throughout. In some areas, I do see a couple concentrations, but nothing had jumped out as far as, oh yeah, when we have this situation, it always occurs absent of a low base, you're seeing this happen. I don't know why there's a stretch on central there, but otherwise they seem pretty scattered about.

Okay. Thank you. Two things. So on the 473, I thought I understood it. Then you mentioned one thing that maybe got me confused. That 473 is just the replacement. That does not include any of the costs we've already taken on for inspections and everything else.

It does not include the observations performed for this report, but it does include some of the costs of removals we've already done.

Okay. But most of the 473 is put them back in? Correct.

Yeah, probably. you're probably talking less than $20,000 is spent right now.

So if we wanted to go forward with this at some point soon, later, whatever, like who's going to build them? Like obviously we want them to look as similar to the ones that are as possible. Are we going to go back to Stanberg, Stanford, whatever the name was and just go back to them. So, so you don't have a concern about their ability to make them. The concern was about the steel ones they made years ago.

Yeah, this time we would get just the new materials they use. And we're buying for the last 10 years probably is our estimation is aluminum. It's much more resilient to this type of corrosion. And that's a custom light that was chosen and built. by custom by Sternberg that was chosen in the nineties by the city. They've since went on to market that as the Clayton light and they sell it, but it's a, it's a custom fixture and everything that we would plan to match with.

And just even though I'm not talking about it today, it's an interesting question. At least my mind is if we wanted to consider this, the Clayton light for all of our streetlights citywide, is that impractical from a cost standpoint or is that something that you've considered?

Impractical.

Okay. Fair enough. Okay. Thanks.

It all makes sense. You might have already answered this. When were these all installed, like, originally? And was it done all at one time? No.

So they began in 95 with a higher concentration between that you see in red there. Okay, that's... It's a very small... I'm sorry, can't read, probably. But... That was run in five-year increments as you work down the left side from 95 to 2000, the orange. We are missing some more recent, probably in the last five or so years that we need to add to this map of developments that have happened. So you'll see some gaps in there that we know we need to fill out, but those are aluminum, new, not of concern right now. I just didn't want to portray that this was all downtown streetscape lights. It's the ones we have documented or tracking right now.

Your best guess, is this something we'd have to do like every four to five years maybe to fund this? Or is this going to be like how often? I

don't see a set repeat of this right now. We haven't seen – right now we're getting some information on how these steel poles are performing. We're seeing some end-to-life in certain areas based off this report. We haven't see anything where aluminum is failing in the same way. So we expect it to be further expanded. longer, but don't know when that might happen yet. So we'll continue to do inspections. And as we get into doing inspections, probably two, three years out on those, we'll hit the zone where aluminum poles were installed and we'll get an idea in a similar report of how many we're looking at and how it tracks compared to steel. At this point, I wouldn't say there's a yearly or every two- or three-year plan that's going to mimic this. This is just a catch-up. We have not done this kind of analysis since these were installed. So in the last 30 years, we've done this once. Okay.

Thank you. Do we, Matt or David, either way, how did they pay for all of them when they were installed? Because I'm looking at the red. It looks like there's a lot of them installed around the same time. Did they – was it – I guess, where did the money come from? Was it just general fund money? Did they capitalize that? Like, how'd they... Because I'm thinking to the point where if all these are going to start expiring about the same time, like, how do we pay for a larger replacement of these that we know is coming?

Yeah, so the... My... David nor I were here at the time, but from what I understand, the streetscape began as an initiative by the city and there were capital projects pursued that some used federal grant money to pursue the projects. And then they became a requirement of developments. So as a site were to come in and disturb, you know, the curb, develop the site, they're required to meet streetscape standards. That still happens today. That includes the sidewalk, the brick banding, the lights, the crosswalks, a variety of things like that. So it was a combination to begin with, but I think it was heavily focused on the city and doing a capital project to get it started. But we haven't done one of those to expand it ourselves since I think 2011 or 12.

Yeah, looking at the date on it, I would imagine it was part of that last cycle with the downtown streets when the streetscape started because we're right at that 21 point. year mark when we started redoing everything downtown. So this would have been the previous cycle where they probably utilized, like Matt said, some federal funding to get that done.

Just another quick question. Would it be a good idea then to maybe get parts for like five other light fixtures just to have in the next... four or five years if another one comes down or something. It's like

maintaining stock?

Right.

Yes, we do, and that's why we have the eight poles right now at the garage. We would need to piece together the assemblies for the lights, and finding those is a bit of a challenge right now. We've got them somewhere. They're just not living in their normal place. But we do maintain stock for some of these type of items,

yeah. Okay, but if you're using all your stock for this, do we have –

Oh, we don't have near this much. We would maintain a couple of each variety of pole and the head. So it wouldn't be a large amount of stock. The assembly on the left is about $8,000. As you move to the third one, it becomes about $14,000. And then I forget what the Cobra head is. It's slightly less, but it's a lot of money to tie up to set. But we do keep the luminaires and parts up top as well as a couple poles of each if we can.

So I just kind of pulling it together. So we're essentially replacing what needs to be replaced without looking at whether we want to change the entire streetscape of downtown, right? This is just to keep up with what's there and to have in reserve. And that will take us forward into the future. As you do the polls, are you able, um, you know, obviously it's not shielded lighting, they're not taller poles or anything, but are you able to make the lights as efficient as Are you changing the actual technology of lights?

I think I understand your question. We have been doing that as they expire now. So these were high-pressure sodium lights that were installed in the 90s. Those have gone out, and we have replaced them with LEDs. Those are more energy efficient. We're using retrofit kits, and we do use a cutoff assembly. So that's not the same as a dark sky, but it does not shine light up. But the globe on it is a diffuser. So it's a little in that direction, but with the way that the – globe is fully diffused around it we can't we can't prevent it by if we're maintaining the style

Matt, thanks for all this information. And everybody asked a lot of great questions. So yeah, I mean, I feel like it was something else that got dropped on your plate. So it's hard to believe that this is happening as well. So but yeah, thank you for all the information. And then so how will the $400 and some thousand dollars when will that? Yeah.

So we'll discuss timing with Public Works. If you remember when we were going through the budget, we were talking about the capital fund and the capital fund balance. We had a capital fund balance of a few million dollars, and I had suggested at that point in time, let's act as if it's not there because that's what we would use to fund the replacements on the lights. The good thing is when we were initially looking at it, we were really concerned with the number of lights that were out that we could have 100 of these that would need to be replaced, and you're looking – potentially up to a $2 million project. Thankfully, this is a lot less, but the funding source would be the same, which is the fund balance within the capital fund. But I'll talk with Public Works about timing and we'll come back with something either between now and next budget year and do it in a budget amendment or be a part of the fiscal year 26, 27 budget. Yeah.

Right. And so just like, are there areas, I mean, living in a place that's lost some of its streetlights and knowing what that feels like, are there, there's just a couple areas where it seemed concentrated, the reds and oranges. Are there areas where we need to go back sooner than later? Like we wouldn't want to wait until next budget year. I

would say that world news would be the spot where you've got those four out that are all in a line the streets across the lights across the street are operable right there may be one orange that's come coming out over there um I mean, we'll discuss getting it done this fiscal year. Do a

simple survey at night

and walk around. And with it coming out of the fund balance, whether we do it this year, I mean, it's not really like a planned budget expense. We can't really get after it any time. But I want to make sure, yeah, I just want to talk with Public Works about our capacity to go out, work with removals, the installations, inspect the stuff as it's happening because we're also going to have a number of other restoration-type projects throughout the city in addition to our regular work and what's going on at the maintenance facility. So it's just working in the timing. The biggest sense of urgency, though, is getting down – getting the lights down that could potentially fall. But –

but if there's look at

the timing

the i mean not that there's an impending project at the world news site but don't they take them down during construction if there's some already there or do they you know

typically they'll need to work within that section right away so the lights will come out as they're working on their project so as

we evaluate

if it isn't too dark there i could wait

yeah you could wait

yeah as we evaluate those projects we consider any potential pending developments and then use of what we have in stock if we die identify any gaps we need to fill in the meantime

sounds good um all right if there's nothing else i think matt you want to move to the next item

Oh, sorry, Byron. I stopped the share when I closed it. I'm sorry. I'll just go ahead and open it.

It's a lot more serious than it really was, Matt.

He did a lot of clicking to get to that, and I've never ran that seat, so I'm not sure what else he needs to do.

Like beaten down by technology. But it's clear. I think it's not being

shared. Thank you, Myron. All right, thank you. All right, we're back for round three, street lighting standards selection. As a reminder, let's see, come on. Letting that go away. So this will inform the lighting projects we have in white on forest high point demand area and then the restoration or the tornado impacted areas. What works. This is a repeat of last time, but just an idea of what we've got where throughout the city, different subdivisions, kind of a breakdown of all the different polls. Picture that it's always good to have for reference, we'll come back to, I'm sure, but how it breaks down into the different subdivisions and the look. So some of the selection considerations we mentioned last time as we focused in on two different options, we have taken a look at each of these for the different manufacturers and those are compiled in a table to the right. A lot of the elements, the different colors and finishes available, the reliability, pull options, There's a lot of similarities between these manufacturers and these lights we've selected the life cycles of the lights, a lot of LEDs are very similar how how they're serviced I've highlighted some of the things that have some slight differences. That will cover more in depth, but the cost of the fixture itself. the different ranges of color temperature available, and then the warranty has a slight difference. But all the other items for the most part between these manufacturers and even these specific lights, they are pretty consistent as they're both reputable manufacturers. Reminder here, this is the Sternberg family called the Euro. The Sternberg Euro that we have seen before. Sternberg, just as a reminder, is the manufacturer of our downtown streetscape lights. This picture in the middle illustrates the family options that it comes with. We're not proposing to utilize those, but just it was an interest item at our previous presentations to know that there was a family of option of lights if they were to expand for any reason. So following our last presentation on this, we took some of the feedback based on what we heard from the poll and the base itself. We went back and got more refined pricing on those. From the base, we heard something decorative that kind of maybe matches with the existing look we got out there, but nothing overly ornate and expensive. So the Luminaire itself, we got refined pricing on that and the poles. You'll see between these two options, there was some, I think, some confusion on the initial prices of the poles and the bases. In some cases, the base is a singular add-on. In other cases, it's the base and the pole. So we've refined those numbers to give a more accurate representation. So here, the Euro light itself, the fixture is $2,500. We are proposing to go with a five inch round pole, which is very similar to what we have in most of the subdivisions now that has fluting. So it's like the picture on the right where it says 550, as well as the one with the base, a smooth pole, is an option and there is some savings if you were to go to that. But what we priced out here based off of the feedback we received last time is a fluted pole that doesn't taper and then some slight base adornment. This results in a overall 15 foot high structure in the end, which matches for the most part what we have in the residential areas.

And just so that I'm clear and maybe everybody else already is, but so it would be the Fluting on the middle one. So the one I guess on my, yes. And then what would the base look like for that? It

would basically be this pole. It has fluting here up top and then the base at the bottom.

So the bottom would be basically what that looks like on the right side. Okay.

So that, that pole itself with the fluting is $2,500. The base itself is $1,275. And then the luminaire that goes on top is $2,5000. This, when we're looking at these lights, these are just the components. We did not include at this point the price of the concrete base because it would be same for both poles. But there is additional cost for that. That's probably in the $3,000 per pole range, just for reference.

What is $3,000? The

concrete base that goes below ground to support either of these options.

Got it. And so that would be in addition. So that would be added, that cost would be added on every pole we put in. Yeah.

Okay. And I know it's not an exact, but in terms of having to run the conduit, how do we think of a price per pole for the conduit? Because I know we've got to dig down and replace the one that's there and put it into a conduit and run the wire. How do we think about the additional cost per pole of that piece? Yeah.

It's not really a cost per pole. It's a cost per area and linear foot of roadway. Part of it, there could be some nuance based off of the light selected and how they're placed in the roadway. I don't see much difference between these two poles. For the most part, the conduit runs, the boring, all that circuitry is going to be the same between these two options.

Okay. And are you looking at less light poles than what we have now on average by using what we're using, or we basically replace like for like, or one for one?

I would say you're one for one leaning towards more poles because some of our weaknesses in some areas is the distribution of light. We have some areas that are high intensity, but it fades off quickly. So we might have a light to meet illumination standards that's a little less powerful, doesn't fade off as quickly, but may result in one more pole per block or something.

Would you clarify that? Because I thought when we talked about the poles being taller, they take fewer poles.

Are you talking Cobra Head poles? Yeah. The lights we have in the field right now range from 12 to 15 foot tall. These are proposed to be 15, so maybe there was a A conversation. I

think you're thinking about when we were talking about potentially switching to the Cobra headlights citywide. It was

the Cobra head that did that. Okay.

But one of the concerns, again, that we talked about at that meeting is when you get into the Cobra heads within the neighborhoods, a lot of times that light distribution is actually not going to be what you would think because of the trees. They get up into the tree canopy itself and that ends up blocking the light. So you kind of want to stay beneath that. The 15 foot hole is really the best option in the neighborhoods.

And we know that's what we essentially have now, so we're not gonna run into a significant amount of tree branches that are going to be limiting the distribution of the land.

Another question I had is, I like the look of all this, two things. One, does the fluted, after the presentation you just gave us in downtown, does the fluded pole catch more of the corrosive salt or anything? Is there any difference in the life of the two poles? I know it's not the downtown heavy usage, but...

No, I'm not aware that that is strictly aesthetic. These areas, the amount of salt they get is much less too. What you're saying is could the, I think I'm hearing, could the salt splash

inside

there and do

they corrode faster? Right.

So this has an integral decorative base, so it doesn't have – it shouldn't be able to penetrate down into there.

The other question, just looking at the cost with the bases that we're adding, do most of our neighbors have bases on their poles? I don't – I haven't even noticed. It's like in Maplewood, Ladue, anywhere else.

So there's not a lot of cities that maintain their own lighting infrastructure. A lot of it's Ameren. Some places do, and some places you'll see it where it may look like a street could be private property that actually maintains it. There are some places that have their own, but I didn't do a survey of those areas. But driving through Kirkwood, for instance, I've seen light pole bases with some decoration on them, I think. Thanks. So that results in a range of costs. We've shown $5,000 to $62.75 just because if you did not use that integral base, you would not have that additional cost. And that would be maybe in those areas where we are replacing tornado poles, the decorative base doesn't match with the rest of the neighborhood, so we would leave that off for now. Maybe install it later when the neighborhood is done, but it does have a range. And then if the option was to just not install a base, then there's an idea of what that savings would be. Option B. So this is slightly different than the one that was more traditional colonial style, I'll call it, from last time. So not to throw a curveball. It kind of matched between the colonial and the option A and was a more modern fixture and a slightly lower cost from Signify. It's called the Metroscape. What we've shown here is the family of light options. We're not proposing all of these, but just to give you an idea of the light options that are available. There's not a bollard option that I've seen just yet like there is with the other one, but that's the only real difference I've seen. So it kind of gives it's a little round like the Euro, but also gives that cage look a little bit like a colonial style we thought would work well. So digging more into this base option, we realized that the price we had previously was, we were adding two numbers because of the base and the pole. The way it was presented, we thought they were individual costs. So this price has gone down a little bit, but what you can see here is the Luminaire itself is 1600 as compared to the 2500 with the other option. And the pole is a little bit A little bit closer in cost, but with the pole you got two different options. You can do a five inch pole with a clamshell base or a five inch pole, with an integral base meaning it's not a piece that goes over the top of it it's just built into the poles all one piece. But between these two options, you'd be looking at a total cost of $3,600 to $3,800 depending on which base option you selected. And that would probably – it wouldn't look any different. It would just be how we would choose to go about it. We would probably do the integral just because it's – You don't have the fitment of the collar around it and the access doors on the outside, but in those areas where we were wanting to replace and match the lights in the neighborhood, it would be an option to use just the base or the pole without the base.

But it would look the same either way to an observer. Right. Yeah.

So similar looking base style here, slightly different. We've tried to narrow this down to get the cost. I think if there was a slightly different base that we decided to go with, it's probably going to be in the same cost range as long as we stay in the same scale.

I mean, Matt, that's pretty significant. Do you have any understanding as to why it is that significant? I mean, you've said to us already that they're pretty much identical for a lot of different reasons. Did this have a longer warranty too? I mean, I just want to, you know, like when you're, I mean, I've never shopped for streetlights obviously, but you know, I'm always trying to be, you know, if I'm buying a nice pair of shoes, like why is this one so much more expensive and is it going to last that much longer? And it doesn't sound like that's

indicated here at all. So. And both of these are from companies that are been around a long time. Right. So. We did drop off one of the other options that was fairly new for this round because this was a slightly lower cost that kind of competed on that end. And we just wanted to give the two options. But, yeah, this is a little bit lower cost than when you think about it in the aggregate across the city.

Matt, the one other thing I remember that was different was the lighting system.

The lumens.

The lumens. Thank you.

Yeah.

Can you, I mean, I don't know how many lumens we're looking to have per light, but can you talk about whether we should be even factoring in that the signify as a lower lumen amount than the Stanberg one? If you go back to the... It

was 2,700 to 5,000 range of lumens and this one was 2,200 to 4,000. We'll run all of these at what? 2,800 to 3,000. So

yeah, I guess there's two things.

The lumens I did not list there. Yeah, all lights are available in a variety of lumens to fit the need of the place you're putting it. You can pretty much pick what you need in that range. But the color temperature is what I listed here. All of them, or both of them, perform in that dark sky friendly range. And you order it for the color you want. The signify the one we're just looking at goes down to 2200 where the Sternberg goes down to 2700. And I'll get into Cobra heads a little bit later, but we've now been able to find a Cobra head that matches both of those ranges as well that we're using.

But can you remind us, because what I have in mind from what I know about like dark sky is there's like the color, but then there is also like, I think we actually want the lumens to be lower or the color to be lower. Can you...

It focuses more on the color. The lumens could come into play when it comes to uplighting, I guess, in some cases, but the restrictions that I'm familiar with with dark sky are more about the color and staying under 3,000

Kelvin.

So a typical house light or something is 2,700 to 3,000. What you see in our downtown a lot of times is 3,000. The older HPS lights that really aren't made anymore yet that are really that amberly amber glow yellow out there they are in the probably 1800 to 2200 range so it's really low as you start getting down to that lower range um it doesn't This probably isn't the industry term, but it doesn't kind of penetrate the area as well. So you could result in more poles as you take it down. Right now, the design layout that we've got, I think, can go down to 2700 and still meet the spacing. But if we were to go down to lower than that, I think we're going to result in a few more light poles.

And for the sake of my thing, so Davis Place, I know, has some of the newer lights. What are they at? It's mainly just for me because I know they're brighter than the Morlids.

Are you asking about the color of the light or the brightness of the light?

The color is a 3,000.

I think it's a 3,000 there were some areas when we first started converting that were 4,000 in there when LEDs were kind of first becoming popular. But I think we went back and even converted those again to 3,000 K the only areas I think we've got above 3,000 K in town. There are a few select areas, I think, over high point demand. Okay.

Just to clarify, if the only category being considered is this one, is there one in your professional opinion that makes one more preferable than the other? Or is that too simplistic a question?

I think it's a balance in what your goals are. If it's getting... lights that are efficient at covering the area while still meeting uh the dark sky compliance i think that 2700 being able to fit in that range is is that balance and is below what the recommended standard is um you could certainly go less if it's strictly an aesthetic uh uh desire but then you would probably spend slightly more in resulting in more lights so i would i'd kind of strike that balance of efficiency while still meeting the desires of the dark sky at 2700 to 3000. so then

matt before i get to the cobra heads if just to boil it down we basically have two lights signify has a longer warranty they both have the rougher the the the color range we need signifies a lot cheaper so is it fair to say that really it's just a matter of which one we like more all else ends like are we willing to sacrifice the look of one to the cheapness of the other one

do you like the look of the first one three thousand dollars better

thank

you that's gonna

say

that's a shorter way of saying what i was trying to ask yes

i don't i don't need that was

it So this kind of gives just a summary of what each one would look like. The low range, if you went with no base. So you're talking about $1,400 difference with no base as you get into... the basic and it adds a little bit more. Um, there is the option to have not doing fluting, which would take, I would estimate somewhere depending on manufacturer 15 to 30% off just the pole cost. So it could be, you could be looking at $500 plus or minus, um, per pole if you went with just a smooth pole. And so I think the options you see on the right, there are smooth poles. Um, But from what we heard, the feedback last time, we thought there was interest in the fluted option that kind of tied into the base.

Yeah. Matt, are you still going to address the warranty issue of the fact that one seems to have a less attractive warranty policy than the other?

Yeah. One has – I wouldn't say it's as less attractive. I'd say it's maybe a bit more – standard with that poll the light fixtures on both have a five-year warranty um but then the the pole on signify they take that out to 10 years we i didn't include them in here but there was some one of the vendors the local vendors gave some examples of some pictures I didn't have one for the Sternberg poll, so I didn't have both to share, but so I didn't include it, but we get some pictures of some lights that have been installed for 10, 20 years in some areas that still look, you know, in good condition. So I think that they've gotten based on those pictures, being willing to put a little bit more warranty on it, you know, maybe that poll performs better over the long run, but I don't think it's more about the finish as opposed to structural issue, I think. When you talk about these polls, it's really about what it's going to look like. I don't know that one's going to fail quicker than the other.

Matt, have you physically touched and felt them yet? Well, my question is – I'm going to Bridget's question. Like one's half as much as the other and I think I like that idea but I do have to question when they're – I mean they're light poles. Like are they thinner or are they – that's what I guess I'm trying to get at is if you felt them and realized, oh yeah, this one's a lot thinner than this one or whatever, whatever.

No, I have not. I mean, I've felt Sternberg lights downtown here, but we've got cut sheets for them and I could get the information, but they are designed to meet the wind loads for this region. So I don't suspect that if you're a manufacturer, you could over-engineer it and put more steel. It makes it heavier and more expensive, but I assume you're going to try to compete and make money, but they're both designed to fit that. the wind loads we'd expect to experience. Thanks.

I vote for option B.

Yep, me too. Rick, do you want to make a comment?

Yes. So my preference is, I think in sync with everyone else's, cheaper with a better warranty is highly appealing. My caveat is I'd like for us to make sure that we've gotten some kind of references from other users, especially anybody that maybe has, if it's possible, that's had them for more than several years just to see what their experience is, really to get to Jeff's point about we want to make sure that what we're buying is the value we think we're buying.

Susan or Kami or Gary, do you guys have any? Yeah, I mean, option B sounds

great.

It all looks good, and I go either way on the fluting. I like the savings of a product with longer warranty.

If I had to put it in my backyard, I would go with A, but since it's for the city and concerned about the city's budget, I'll go with B.

I know.

that's

just

that's how we got a deal red yeah no yeah

we're gonna put a blue one right in front of your house yeah

that was one of the things i gave up on trying to edit in the last three

blue with an orange top for like the greyhound yeah

when i'm used to an orange top and more or less is what we have we have those old like orange yellow lights that don't actually give off any light

All right, is there anything else? Sounds like.

I think I didn't get through all the slides, but just to not an action item right now, but just to give you an idea while we were pulling this information together since we did talk Cobra Heads last time. What you see on the left is our standard Cobra Head direct burial pole. It's a composite pole that goes into the ground standard arm with the head you see on the left there they come in different options but that's pretty standard, what we install so that's about $2,300 that we would pay now. If we would go to a decorative pole and either one of these manufacturers and use either their specialty Cobra head or a basic Cobra head in a finish to match the pole, that would take it up to 6,800 to 11,000, depending on what you pick just for reference. So it can triple to quadruple the price going with the decorative. And then you're also would have to add a base for this decorative pole, which you do not have in our current situation with the direct burial. So these go up, would go up to $11,000 to, you know, $15,000, $16,000. They start looking like the price of our downtown things. We did not get a price for the decorative light fixture over here, but I imagine it's very similar cost. So this was just more informational. I know we talked about it last time, but just for scale of reference while we were collecting these numbers.

Matt, just to follow up too, because I just want to, because you talked about today, like my my street has Cobra heads and they aren't very effective because they sit up in the trees. So, I mean, will there be any thought to going forward to buying one of the new lights? I know we talked about that. We probably just do Cobra head for Cobra head, but to actually make them effective in lighting anything? When you

say new lights, you're saying the cobra

head lights? No, no, no. The lights that we just talked about, like bringing them down. Because again, the cobra heads, for sure. I mean, they're literally up in the trees, so they don't do a ton, but-

Right now, that's not the plan as we approach these areas. We're doing two subdivisions and then the tornado replacements. That can be discussed if that's something the city wants to expend the funds on as we approach individual areas. But right now, it's planned to go back one for one.

Right, in the area. And I don't know, I guess I don't know how many streets actually have. Are there any Cobra heads targeted

for replacement in your next phase of work?

Yes, there'd be some of the high point demand area.

And so would we analyze that to determine if the area would actually be better served by the shorter pole?

A high level. So we've not done a detailed analysis, but the high level analysis shows that they're served by Cobra heads now. The Cobra head is a third of the cost and you can space them out at twice the distance roughly. So that level of analysis says that it's not more cost effective. It would be a decision if the council wanted to spend the additional cost in those areas to upgrade them. But right now we're planning to go back just with Cobra heads.

Yes. What you're asking is if we can make sure that they're effective in lighting the street. Yeah.

You had made that comment earlier about how Cobra heads sometimes when they're up in, you know, Areas that have a lot of trees, you know, just again, just that concern about making sure that we're actually, because I know when we did the lighting study, that was one of the things, and this was obviously a long time ago. That was one of the they talked about was we don't always get good light disbursement because we have a great tree canopy and that's great. But I just wonder about as we're doing all this, whether, you know, and that, I mean, that will be up to you and other experts,

but yeah. Good question. I guess to add to that, that's part of the reason We're going back to Cobra heads where they were. We know those trees are higher, but the same people who did that lighting study in 2017, 18 are the people who are performing the design for these neighborhoods. So they're aware of that. They do have that information and aware of those deficiencies and the projects are to address those illumination standard deficiencies for the distribution. So there'll be, They're modeling lights at these heights and these lumens and these colors. And they show, they produce a photometric plan to show where that light can go. So they are aware of those areas. Now there may be some tree trimming that happens with it, but that's, That's part of it. We shouldn't anticipate we're going to run into an issue where if we, if we transitioned from 15 foot to 25 foot poles in areas like we transitioned somewhere to Cobra heads might be more likely to run into that situation of the trees impacting the area. That answers the question.

Yes. No, it does. It does. Just one more thing. We received, I think all of us got an email with a concern about ADA compliance and the accessibility of our sidewalks for people in wheelchairs or whatever. and just asking us to be um aware of whether we put the base on the pole or anything else our sidewalks remain uh wide enough for people to use them well have we looked at that or have we identified any problem areas or

i'm not aware of any residential areas that we're looking at with these projects where the bases would be impacting the existing sidewalk if it is and it's an area where we're moving it we would move it i would plan to move it out of the sidewalk so long as there's sufficient right-of-way and tree lawn there it might be that if there's not we widen the sidewalk around the pole and reduce the tree lawn through our sidewalk project but yeah if it's something where it's impacted we can correct it with moving it during this project i'd be interested in that location specifically if there's somebody has a specific i don't know

if it was the base of the location of the poll or whatever but just making sure that um we're worried that as we go into the

yeah this is a great opportunity to take those things

anybody else

i got that one

yeah okay

yes

oh now we ask questions

no So we'll go, you know, get this refined. We expect that we will be largely in this style. If for some reason something comes up that a polar base slightly different than this, it feels like based on the feedback the last two meetings, there's some latitude and slight adjustments, if I'm hearing everybody correctly, so long as we generally get this kind of look.

Yeah, and especially with that kind of a cost savings.

Thank you.

Thank you, Matt, for narrowing it down

to two options. It's a lot more options than I ever thought there would be. My goodness.

I'm glad you didn't bring the catalog to us.

Yes, she'll need to read it, but we'll need to do a roll call first so that we can vote on anything. Correct? We didn't take a roll call at the beginning because it's a work session. So June will take a quick roll call and then Council Member Waldman will read the executive session.

Council Member Buse? Here. Council Member Patel? Here. Council member Gary Feder?

Council Member Buse? Here. Council Member Patel? Here. Council member Fader?

Here.

Councilmember Rick Hummell?

Councilmember Hummel?

Here.

Council Member Jeffery Yorg.

Council Member York.

Here.

Council Member Waldman. Here. Mayor McAndrew. Here. City Manager David Gipson.

Council Member Waldman. Here. Mayor McAndrew. Here. City Manager Gibson.

Here. I move that the City Council hold a closed meeting with a closed vote and record as authorized by Section 610.021, 1, 2, and 3, Revised Statutes of Missouri relating to legal issues, real estate, and or personnel negotiation of a contract pursuant to Section 610.0112 RSMO and and or proprietary information pursuant to section 610.02115, and or information related to public safety and security measures pursuant to sections 610.02018 and 19 RSMO.

I second.

Council Member Buse? Aye. Council Member Patel? Aye. Council member Gary Feder?

Council Member Buse? Aye. Council Member Patel? Aye. Council member Fader?

Aye.

Council members Rick Hummell?

Council members Hummel?

Aye.

Councilmember Yorg? Aye. Council Members Waldman? Aye. Mayor McAndrew?

Aye.

All right, Rick, if you want to switch to your other link there, we'll get things changed around here in the chambers. Okay, will do.