Decorative Lamp Posts Removed from Upper Village

CROTON-ON-HUDSON, N.Y. – Decorative lamp posts which once stood in the upper village have been taken down after years of salt and water oxidized their bases. Replacing the lamp posts could cost $110,200, according to preliminary estimates from the Department of Public Works.

The lamp posts were taken down after someone leaned on one of the posts in front of Grouchy Gabe’s deli, and it fell over, according to Superintendent of Public Works, Marco Gennarelli. Gennarelli said the company, Pennsylvania Globe, which made the lamps over a decade ago, took the post back to their workshop to see if it could be repaired for less than the cost of buying new lamp posts.

The village is still waiting on price estimates for rehabbed lamp posts with new bases. In the meantime, the village has replaced the decorative lamp posts with standard lamp posts, and small plantings with wooden stages.

Preliminary estimates for replacing the decorative lamp posts range from $2,800 to $3,500 per lamp post, plus about $1,000 per lamp post for installation costs. There are 29 lamp posts in the upper village, putting preliminary figures for complete replacement between $110,200 and $130,500.  

Village Trustee Casey Raskob said, despite the costs, the village should consider keeping the decorative lamp posts because they make the business district a more attractive place to shop. “We should think about what lamps we want to put in our living room,” said Raskob.

Mayor Leo Wiegman seemed to agree, and said that if the posts were already down, it seemed like a ripe opportunity to replace the posts with a high efficiency bulb and casing. Street lighting and traffic signals account for about 10 percent of the village’s greenhouse gas emissions, and over $88,000 in electricity annually.

A surprisingly complicated subject, determining efficient street lighting, is dependent not only on actually changing the bulbs used, but by informing Con Edison that the energy consumption has changed.

The village is charged a flat rate for each lamp post it operates. Each street light is calculated to be on 4,272 hours per year. Charges are dependent on the type of bulb the lamp post uses.

The Conservation Advisory Council recently did an inventory of the number of lamp posts which the village was being charged for, and found inaccuracies in the report from the energy provider. The inaccuracies were corrected.

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