Streetlight-Sale Advocates Make Last Stand

Light-pollution foes in Hamden are making a last stand now that the town has dropped a bid to buy streetlights from United Illuminating.

Those are the latest developments in a three-year battle over darkness and light in the town.

The chapter has seen two wildly different financial analyses pit activists and council members against town hall on whether it makes more dollars and sense to continue pursuing buying the streetlights or to let UI proceed with its own updating of the fixtures.

In 2017, UI was preparing to update Hamden’s high-pressure sodium streetlights to LEDs, as it did in the rest of its territory. It was about to go ahead with the conversion to more energy efficient, but brighter, streetlights.

Then a group of citizens, led by Christina Crowder and Bob Pattison, brought an idea to Mayor Curt Leng that gave him pause.

The lights UI was planning to install were much brighter than they needed to be, Crowder and Pattison said, and that can have negative effects on both human health and on the surrounding ecosystem. If the town were to buy its streetlights, it could not only control the brightness; it could also save a significant amount of money, their research showed.

Leng was open to the proposal. He sent a letter to UI stating the town’s intent to buy its streetlights, though the utility maintained that its streetlights are not for sale. Read more about that here.

Connecticut’s two electric utilities — UI and Eversource — own the streetlights in most municipalities in the state. In Eversource territory, though, many towns have begun to buy their streetlights. A 2001 case in Torrington ruled that the utility had to make its lights available for sale. Since then, a number of towns have opted to buy the lights.

In UI territory, though, the situation is different. UI is much smaller than Eversource. It provides electricity to only 17 towns, and unlike for Eversource, owning streetlights and charging municipalities for them is a significant source of revenue.

New Haven is the only municipality in UI territory that owns its streetlights. It bought them in the 1980s, in a one-off deal because the utility was strapped for cash. Since then, UI has not been open to selling its lights. 

In March of 2019, Hamden was poised to begin the process of buying its lights. At the time, it appeared that the town had to submit a letter to the Public Utilities Regulatory Authority (PURA) to get a ruling determining that UI, like Eversource, has to make its streetlights for sale.

The town then entered a contract with the energy efficiency company NORESCO to do an audit of the town’s energy-related systems and provide recommendations for efficiency. As a part of NORESCO’s audit, it crunched the numbers on streetlight acquisition.

In October, NORESCO’s John Dimodica presented his analysis of the costs and benefits of streetlight acquisition versus letting UI keep them and do its LED conversion.

Crowder, who was not present in Hamden at the time, was Skyping into the meeting.

“I have bad news,” she recalled Dimodica saying. The analysis he presented showed that while purchasing the town’s 6,872 streetlights would save the town money compared to what it spends now on its high-pressure sodium lights, it would save the town more money to let UI keep the lights and convert them to LEDs.

As Assistant Town Attorney Brendan Sharkey (pictured) told the Legislative Council last week, that analysis pushed the administration to decide to let UI continue with the LED conversion, rather than trying to buy the lights. He presented those numbers as a part of a resolution to enter an agreement with UI outlining the terms of the conversion.

But after Council President Mick McGarry read over 200 pages of letters from residents urging the council not to enter the UI agreement and take streetlight acquisition seriously, the council voted to table the item until it got a presentation about the alternative.

On Tuesday, Tanko Lighting, which would contract with the town to carry out the acquisition process, sent its own analysis of the costs of acquisition to the town. It came up with a very different result from the NORESCO one. Its calculations show that the town would save $7 million more over the next 20 years by buying its lights than it would by letting UI convert them.

Which analysis is correct depends on a few complex factors that are largely out of Hamden’s control. If Tanko is right, there are just a few easy legal procedures standing in the way of significant savings from acquisition. If the town’s administration and the NORESCO analysis are correct, the picture is not so rosy, and those legal procedures would not be as easy as Tanko suggests.

If the town is going to buy its streetlights, it must happen now, before UI converts them to LEDs. It would be much cheaper to buy the old lights that are still up on the poles than it would be to buy the new LEDs UI plans to install. Waiting until after the conversion would make acquisition prohibitively expensive. But UI also has a timeline, and needs to get started on the conversion soon, Sharkey told the council last week.

And UI maintains that its streetlights are not for sale.

“We understand and respect the importance for the town to listen to its residents and consider all available options,” UI spokesperson Ed Crowder (no relation to Christina Crowder) wrote in an email to the Independent. ​“We have long maintained that UI’s proposal to upgrade the town to efficient, long-lasting LED streetlight technology is the best choice for Hamden and its taxpayers, and independent review now supports this.”

After the NORESCO presentation last fall, Tanko gave its own presentation explaining a very different position. But after that meeting, despite years of examining the feasibility of the project, the town did not move forward with it.

Christina Crowder said the town should have at least held a hearing, or filed with PURA to try to see if clearing some legal hurdles was even possible so it could make a more informed decision about buying the lights. But instead, she said, there was silence, until a few days before last week’s meeting, when she and Pattison found out that the town was planning to move ahead with letting UI convert the lights, giving up the ownership dream.

Taxes, Finance Period, ​“Facility Charge”

Last week, Sharkey told the council that the numbers provided by NORESCO were essentially not in dispute, and that Jason Tanko of Tanko Lighting had vetted them.

As of last week’s meeting, the town had not received an actual cost breakdown from Tanko, Sharkey said.

But this week, Tanko provided his own numbers, and they differ significantly from the NORESCO analysis. Tanko also said he had not vetted the NORESCO numbers and did not approve of them.

“I’m being told I was in alignment with this,” he told the Independent. ​“And I’m really not.”

The numbers NORESCO based its calculations on came from UI. As Christina Crowder pointed out, UI has a financial interest in Hamden not trying to buy its streetlights because streetlights are a major profit center for the utility. She said the numbers it provides for an analysis of whether acquisition is financially feasible are bound to show that Hamden is better off sticking with UI.

Tanko Lighting first sent an outline of what the acquisition process would look like to the town in 2018. The company does streetlight acquisition projects all over the country, taking charge of the process from the legal hurdles all the way through the actual installation.

The company has conducted streetlight projects all over Connecticut. It has led 13 towns in the state through the acquisition process, though all have been in Eversource territory.

Tanko pointed out a few aspects of the NORESCO cost analysis that he thinks are not accurate.

The NORESCO analysis shows that the town would save $4.1 million more after 15 years by letting UI do its conversion. The Tanko analysis, on the other hand, looks at a 20-year period, and shows $7.2 million more in savings than the UI-conversion plan.

First, he said, the NORESCO analysis overstates the amount that the town gets in property taxes from UI for the streetlights. Like for other properties in town, UI pays property taxes on the streetlights it operates in Hamden. If the town bought the lights, it would lose that tax revenue.

Second, he said, the NORESCO analysis assumed the town would pay off the cost of buying the lights and putting up new ones over 15 years. He said it can be done in 10, which would save the town on extra interest payments. In May, General Electric sent a letter to the town indicating that it would be interested in providing a $4.7 million loan to pay off the lights over a 10-year period.

The Tanko numbers also show slightly lower maintenance costs in the long-run. But the bulk of the discrepancy between the two analyses is in one particular charge that accounts for nearly $400,000 of difference each year.

In New Haven, UI charges the city a $4‑per-pole ​“facility charge” for attaching New Haven’s streetlights to the UI system. That charge is set by PURA, and whether buying the lights actually turns out to be cheaper hinges on whether PURA is willing to eliminate that charge.

Tanko told the town that the charge can be eliminated. The Torrington case that ruled that Eversource had to offer its lights for sale also denied the company the right to charge for attaching town-owned lights to its poles. The decision stated that the utility already charges the cost of its poles through the regular rates municipalities pay. ​“If a pole rental fee were imposed absent a rate setting proceeding,” the decision states, ​“customers would pay twice for pole-related costs.”

Because of that case, the facility charge does not exist for municipalities that own their streetlights in Eversource territory. Tanko said that UI had simply ​“snuck one by the goalie” by getting New Haven to pay the charge. He said the town would simply have to have a member of its General Assembly delegation send a letter to PURA asking it to open a rate case, and PURA would likely rule in Hamden’s favor.

Sharkey, on the other hand, said it would not be that easy.

“If it were that easy, why has New Haven not received that waiver,” he pointed out. That fee, he said, is something that PURA imposed on New Haven.

UI is a much smaller utility than Eversource, he said. For UI, streetlights are an important source of revenue, while for Eversource, they’re less important. Because of the vastly different sizes of the two utilities and their different revenue sources, PURA treats them differently, he said. When PURA designs rate structures for the two utilities, it takes into account their size and capacity.

“PURA has designed a rate structure for UI that is what it is, and it’s going to be different than Eversource,” he said.

Audit

The NORESCO analysis also does not take into account the fact that if Hamden were to buy its streetlights, it would do an audit first and likely remove a number of unnecessary lights, reducing the overall number and therefore the price.

Hamden’s streetlight system likely has a number of superfluous lights, and lights in some places may be brighter or closer together than they need to be.

As a part of the acquisition process, Tanko would determine where lights really are necessary and then design a more efficient lighting system, with brighter lights lighting intersections, and well-spaced, dimmer lights on residential streets.

The town may do the same even if it doesn’t buy its lights. Sharkey said Hamden would likely do an audit before the UI LED conversion. UI will not do the audit, but if the town pays for it, it can tell UI which lights to replace and which ones not to. The audit would have to be complete before UI plans to start installing the lights this fall.

Eminent Domain

If Hamden does decide to try purchasing its lights, it may have to take them by eminent domain.

Last year, the town was poised to ask PURA to intervene to force the utility to offer its lights for sale. Last week, Sharkey told the council that going to PURA might not work. Eminent domain, he said, would be the most likely solution.

Tanko said that at first, he would try to negotiate in good faith with UI. Eminent domain, he said, would be a last resort. Connecticut’s eminent domain laws would work in the town’s favor, he said, which UI knows, adding to the pressure to negotiate.

Tanko said he has gotten to the point of filing eminent domain in the past, and if it comes to that, he said he thinks Hamden would win.

If Hamden chooses to go that route, it might not be alone. Fairfield is also in talks with Tanko about buying its streetlights, even though UI has already converted its lights to LEDs.

Fairfield’s Assistant Public Works Director Ed Boman said the town is considering the purchase, but is still figuring out whether it makes sense.

“The economics of buying them before the LED lights are very good,” he said. ​“After LED lights, you’re tossing a ball up.”

Fairfield looked into buying its lights 10 years ago, but hit a wall because UI was unwilling to sell them, he said. Tanko recently reached out to the town, prompting a second investigation into the feasibility of the purchase. He said the town does not yet have an analysis of whether it makes sense.

Tanko will present to the council on Monday at its 7 p.m. meeting.