FALLSBURG -At a recent town board work session in Fallsburg, Casey Mastro, Central New York Energy Manager at New York Power Authority (NYPA), a third-party non-profit entity, met with board members to discuss a proposed “turn-key project to upgrade the existing street light system to energy efficient, long-lasting LED street lights.”

Earlier this year, Governor Cuomo announced that the Smart Street Lighting NY program would replace nearly 500,000 street lights statewide to LED technology by 2025.

Locally, Mastro is working with five municipalities - Tusten, Delaware, Bethel, Thompson and Rockland, the first three of which have moved on to the design phase - on a single, countywide street lighting project.

As part of the service agreement with NYPA, the county will receive a local contractor who would handle all necessary maintenance upkeep and repairs. “The materials are warranted for ten years,” stated Mastro. “NYPA puts out a one-year labor warranty.”

If this project is approved by the board and implemented, it could save Fallsburg taxpayers approximately $213, 684 per year in electricity cost savings. Presently, there are 1,337 street lights which would be changed throughout the town under this estimated $1,357,944 lighting project, which would be completed by the spring of 2019.

For Fallsburg Town Supervisor, Steven Vegliante, “The reason that we made the call and the reason why the frustration that got us to think about it [program] is because I don't know how many times residents call about street lights. We call [NYSEG] week after week, and NYSEG is unresponsive on every single level - consumer, residential, commercial, and municipal.”

Other members expressed concerns about repair and restoration respond times during power outages, an issue that the town found troubling with NYSEG.

Towns in Rockland, Westchester, and Monroe Counties have already started the process of obtaining the rights over utility equipment and are working with NYPA to implement the transition to LED technology. “The issue with Central New York,” stated Mastro, “is that there is crumbling infrastructure. And it is everywhere.”

In October 2016, the state's Public Service Commission approved Section 70-a that provided municipalities with guidelines on how to buy out their street lights from the electrical utility company that owns them.

The next phase will be to vote for the town to move forward with having NYPA develop an engineering proposal. Once that has been approved, there will be a 12-16 week planning period during which time the town would have to acquire ownership of all assets from NYSEG.

Aggregating assets from utility companies, like NYSEG, “has taken on a life of its own,” stated Mastro. Nonetheless, the town has already considered this step in the process and has contacted NYSEG for information regarding purchase information for utility assets.