On the agenda for tonight’s council meeting is a request from Barbara Van Auken to change the policy regarding ornamental street lighting. Currently, if your neighborhood wants these pretty street lights (and my neighborhood has them — they’re great), you have to get over 50% of the neighbors to agree to a 50/50 split of the cost of installing them. The city pays 50%, and the neighborhood pays 50%, divided among the homeowners. Each homeowner can pay their share of the cost as either a lump-sum payment or spread out over 10 years on their property taxes, with interest. This called a “special assessment.”

The Orchard District (which is bounded by Columbia Terrace, Sheridan, Main, and North) wants ornamental lighting, but has not been able to gather the requisite number of signatures to get a special assessment for them. So Barbara Van Auken has a plan: have the city pay for the ornamental lighting not at 50%, or 80% (like they do for sidewalks), but 100%, subject to some restrictions, of course:

Council Member Van Auken has suggested a new policy that would allow for 100% City participation in a lighting project if the following criteria are met: 1. The area served is eligible to receive CDBG funds for a street lighting project; 2. The area served has an established and active neighborhood association that supports the project; 3. There are sufficient CDBG funds available to fund the project.

“CDBG” is short for Community Development Block Grant, a program started by the U. S. Department of Housing and Urban Development in 1974. Basically, the federal government gives money (grants) annually “on a formula basis to entitled cities and counties to develop viable urban communities by providing decent housing and a suitable living environment, and by expanding economic opportunities, principally for low- and moderate-income persons.” The city receives approximately $1.9 million annually through this program. The Orchard District is eligible to receive CDBG funds because of the average income level of the residents.

Van Auken’s request, the communication goes on to state, “would allocate the entire cost of the street lighting system to the CDBG budget, and qualify the project as an area benefit,” using unallocated CDBG money from past years. How much will it cost to install ornamental lighting on the four interior streets of the Orchard District? We don’t know for sure, but it’s estimated to cost $230,000.

So, the question is, is this good public policy? On the one hand, I can see the benefits of this system. You want to fix up a neighborhood to make it attractive for reinvestment, to try to improve owner occupancy, and slumlords are going to balk at paying higher taxes on their rental properties for niceties such as ornamental lighting. In some older neighborhoods, you may never be able to get any infrastructure improvements that require a special assessment if there aren’t enough owner-occupied properties. In that sense, this is an investment.

But others would contend that this is unfair for a couple of reasons. One has to do with the past: there are other older neighborhoods — also CDBG-eligible — that went through the special assessment process and are still paying for their lighting. The other has to do with the future: since this benefit will only be available as long as CDBG funds are available, and since the cost of lighting is pretty expensive and there are other demands on CDBG funds, very few neighborhoods will get free lighting.

For myself, I have mixed feelings about it. I lean toward relaxing the rules rather than throwing the rules away. For instance, they could change it to be an 80/20 split like the city does for sidewalks (city pays 80% and the neighborhood pays 20%). Maybe the lower cost will tip the scales enough to get buy-in from over 50% of the neighbors. If there’s something that the city should be paying for 100%, it’s sidewalks, not ornamental lighting.