Green Pastures is a bit darker at night than the rest of the city, though hopefully that may change soon.
At its meeting Monday, Marysville City Council spent time discussing faulty streetlights and what can be done to fix them.
Council member Mark Reams said he brought the problem up to city Planning Director Mike Andrako. Reams, who lives in Green Pastures, who said some of his neighbors have complained about several faulty lights. Some of these neighbors made lists of which streetlights in their neighborhood were out.
Reams said he followed up with the city several times, but with no results.
“As of today, four weeks later, there’s still five of them that have not been repaired,” he said.
Bob Stallman, vice president of Miami Valley Lighting (MVL), said his company is frustrated too. MVL is responsible for about 1,700 lights in Marysville.
According to the city’s contract with MVL, Stallman said his company generally has three days to fix minor outages, which would be a single faulty light. Major outages would be a pole getting knocked down, or having to rebuild an entire fixture. Stallman said his company has seven days to rectify those outages.
Reams said some of the lights in his area hadn’t been repaired since January. He said at one point, a light had been reported as repaired, but still didn’t work.
“And that’s not the first time that I’ve seen a light that was reported repaired, and it was not repaired,” Reams said.
In an interview, City Manager Terry Emery said most of the major complaints have been in Green Pastures.
Stallman said Marysville is unusual in that his company sees many repeat outages for individual lights. He said the recent work by WOW Cable caused some problems.
“We’d fix it, replace a lamp, then a couple months later we’d get another call who says it’s not working,” Stallman said. “These repeat outages are something we typically don’t see that we need to address here.”
Stallman said to combat this problem, MVL will begin a daily report to keep track of which lights have recently been reported fixed.
“What that means is we’re going to be able to address that problem a little bit quicker than we’re doing now,” Stallman said.
His company will also send crews with more experience to those repeat outages. Those crews will be able to look for more advanced problems.
“We’ve started to do that immediately, I mean this week,” Stallman said.
Stallman also said Marysville is “a little unique,” as there are several different types of streetlights that need to be maintained.
These lights have varying life expectancies. For example, metal halide lights last for about a year, while high-pressure sodium lights can last three to five years.
“That’s not an excuse, that’s just the reality of it,” Stallman said.
Reams said he’s happy to see changes being made.
“I’m very concerned, and I’m going to hold you to it,” Reams said. “You’re here tonight, saying that things are going to be better, and I’m expecting hopefully seven days from now that these lights (are fixed).”
Officials also told council the three-way stop at Maple Street and Elwood Avenue will remain in place for the time being.
The city added two stop signs to the intersection at Maple Street and Elwood Avenue during the Main Street Bridge replacement project, which wrapped up last week. City Project Manager Marc Dilsaver said the city is planning to keep an eye on how the set up works for normal traffic.
“So we’ll monitor that and see how traffic does,” Dilsaver said.
Council was supportive of the decision to test out the intersection.
Council member Tracy Richardson said she liked the idea of waiting. She acknowledged that she’s seen a “consensus” of people who support the three-way stop.
Council member Deborah Groat said a “former police officer” told her the intersection has been a “resounding success.”
“It’s just fortunate that the bridge outage gave us an opportunity to check this out,” she said.
Officials noted the intersection might cause problems for police during the school year.
“It can create a lot of congestion,” Emery said. “But we’ll evaluate that as well.”
Mayor J.R. Rausch encouraged council members to listen for any feedback from constituents regarding the intersection.
“As you’re getting any comments from citizens, please pass it on,” Rausch said.