Turn off the street lights, Danville

It’s more than a little ironic that a recent college graduate came up with the bright idea that Danville could save some money by turning off some street lights.

This is, after all, a city government that owns an electric company that tells its bill-weary customers that one way for them to save money is to conserve energy.

A good idea is a good idea, regardless of who comes up with it.

In this case, credit Lee Vogler, a recent graduate of Virginia Commonwealth University, who wondered why Danville had so many streetlights in sparsely developed and low-traffic areas.

Danville’s illumination of Riverside Drive and South Boston Road was the result of a judicial order from the 1988 annexation. Some city services, such as streetlights, could be provided fairly quickly. But those lights stayed on because of the inertia that has for years packed lard into the budget.

In the late 1980s, the light poles had to be spaced every 320 feet, but Danville planted them every 200 feet to help extend electrical service. Now, if the city is proposing turning off and removing the light fixtures on every other pole. To do that, the city will need permission from VDOT, but the cost savings — $32,000 in annual electric costs versus removing the lights once for $11,000 — is worth the effort.

The city will have to spend the "saved" money on other street maintenance projects, but it’s still a win-win for the city and its residents.

What isn’t clear about this is why this great idea had to come from outside the city government. Surely, the rigors of balancing a municipal budget during a recession would have forced the city staff — and more importantly, Danville City Council — to come up with all kinds of ways to cut, slash, trim, delay and deny.

City workers haven’t had a raise for the past couple of years, but the real question is why all areas of city spending weren’t put to the same type of scrutiny during these tough times that Vogler put to the street lights.

When a resident comes up with a cost saving idea, that’s good news for the taxpayers. But when the cost of government never seems to go down, what does that tell the taxpayers? Is every dollar amount in every line of the city’s budget sacred, untouchable and absolutely needed?

Of course not.