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Lakewood: Township fed up with broken lights


fixing traffic light.jpgAccording to a report in the Asbury Park Press, Lakewood township pays about $55,000 each month to Jersey Central Power & Light Co., which powers thousands of street lights scattered throughout this community of some 75,000 people.However, with up to 50 or 60 lights burned out on a given day, and complaints of a sluggish response to those outages by the power company, township officials have decided to take an unusual approach to deliver its unhappy message.

“I don’t know how else to get their attention, other than not paying the bill,” Township Committeeman Meir Lichtenstein said. The decision to cut off payment stems from concerns about a situation that has gotten progressively worse in recent months, with lights burned out for weeks on end, township officials said.

From college students to stroller-pushing mothers, Lakewood’s downtown streets are heavily traveled by pedestrians. A burned-out street light may seem minor, but a lack of lighting creates a public safety problem, said Lichtenstein, Lakewood’s deputy mayor.

“We’re a walking community,” Lichtenstein said. “When the lights are out, it brings crime and it makes it unsafe for pedestrians.” Well-lighted streets serve as a deterrent to criminal activity, he said.

JCP&L spokesman Ron Morano said less than 1 percent of street lights are burned out at a given time in Lakewood and other towns in the region.

“We’ve got pretty good stats,” Morano said. “But every street light repair doesn’t just require putting in a new light bulb.”

Often, the repair can involve time-consuming underground work, Morano said.

“If lights are out in town, we have a duty to repair them and it’s something we take seriously,” Morano said. As for Lakewood’s decision to stop payment: “We need to review what actions Lakewood has proposed to take,” he said.

The issue of burned-out street lights has been raised in other Ocean County towns, including neighboring Brick. In the past, officials there have complained of slow response from the utility company in fixing street lights, although they also said there’s little a town can do, because oversight falls to the state Board of Public Utilities.

“We can talk about it at council meetings. We can give them bad publicity. We can say: “You’re not being a good neighbor,’ ” Brick Township Council President Stephen C. Acropolis said after the issue was raised at a meeting earlier this year by a Brick resident.

When it comes to monitoring the approximate 5,000 street lights in Lakewood, township officials often rely on the public to inform them when there’s an outage. JCP&L is not required to monitor the lights.

Township Committeeman and state Sen. Robert Singer, R-Ocean, speaking at a Thursday Township Committee meeting, said the utility company needs to dedicate more resources to customer service.

“They don’t have enough crews,” Singer said. “It has gotten progressively worse.”

Lichtenstein said: “The current system they (JCP&L) have is too overwhelmed and they can’t keep up. We need to find a system that works.’

(Source: APP)



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