Port St. Lucie decides to keep street lights on at night instead of turning them off to save money

Port St. Lucie decides to keep street lights on at night instead of turning them off to save money
With high energy costs continuing to place a burden on the city of Port St. Lucie, officials are trying to find a way to save money by shutting off city lights in some areas at night, but some officials don't like the idea.

Some council members in Port St. Lucie wanted to shut off the street lights on Crosstown Parkway, Village Parkway and in the city's civic center at night. The three areas combined have a total of about 1,200 lights, which costs the city about $12,000 a month to keep on at night.

Terrence Mariani took his kids to the Civic Center Monday during the day.

"It's beautiful out here," he said. "It's a nice place for the kids to come play in the nice fountains and they put a lot of money into this."

It's not during the day the city is spending money to keep the center operating. Engineering officials say at night the city spends about $2,500 a month to keep its 238 lights on.

"At night time I don't think it's really that important to light it up like a Christmas tree for everybody to see it," Mariani said.

At Village Parkway there are about 300 lights, which cost about $3,000 a month and at the Crosstown Parkway there are about 500 lights, which cost the city about $5,000 a month, but darkening those area causes safety concerns for the Mayor and other council people.

"Safety is our number one concern," Manager of the city's traffic operations, Jesse Quirion said. "We don't want to have any liability to endangering ourselves or the public by any means."

It's that reason the city council decided to continue to pay to keep the lights on all night.

"The negatives seemed to outweigh the positives so we kept the lights on,"Quirion said.

Now it's back to the drawing board for the city's engineers to find somewhere else to save money.

"We're looking at additional lighting," Quirion said. "We're looking at industrial lighting, LED lighting and even solar."

But the problem is that has a big initial cost meant for savings later when some people say the city need the savings now.

"It is something we should cut, but I think we just need to be smart about it," Mariani said. "You're not going to make everyone happy."