HomeMy WebLinkAboutMemo - Mail Packet - 3/9/2021 - Memorandum From Ken Mannon, Kraig Bader And Mike Calhoon Re: February 23, 2021 Council Follow Up: Municipality, Parks, And Streetlighting Code Compliance
Operation Services
300 LaPorte Avenue
Building B
PO Box 580
Fort Collins, CO 80522
970.221.6610
970.221.6534 - fax
fcgov.com
MEMORANDUM
DATE: March 3, 2021
TO: Mayor and City Councilmembers
THRU: Darin Atteberry, City Manager
Kelly DiMartino, Deputy City Manager
Tyler Marr, Interim Director Information Services
FROM: Ken Mannon, Director, Operation Services
Kraig Bader, Director, Electric Engineering
Mike Calhoon, Director, Parks
RE: February 23, 2021 Council Follow up: Municipality, Parks, and Streetlighting
Code Compliance
Background
The purpose of this memo is to provide City Council with information requested at the February
23 work session. Information regarding the progress of ensuring city buildings, parking lots,
parks, and streetlights are dark skies friendly is presented from Operation Services, Parks, and
Light and Power.
City Facilities and Parking Lots
Operation Services has long supported the dark sky initiatives and started the transition from
conventional exterior lighting to LED lighting in 2009. Staff continues to design exterior
lighting systems to meet Dark Sky, Night Sky, and LEED requirements. The latest LED lighting
retrofits include the enhanced features with 3000K lighting temperatures, automated dimming,
motion sensors, and higher energy performance.
New buildings and building retrofits are built in compliance with the new code requirements. For
instance, the new East Community Park Maintenance Facility is being designed to the meet the
drafted lighting code, and in 2020, staff converted areas of the Lincoln Center exterior lighting
system to meet newly drafted lighting code.
While it is our assessment that much progress has been made on City facilities broadly, there is
still some work ahead to bring in all city-owned buildings and parking lots into compliance with
the new code. To address this, in 2022 budget offers, we will propose a plan to engage a lighting
design firm to evaluate all our municipal exterior lighting systems for compliance to the new
code. Assuming that work is able to move forward, future BFO offers will
implement the conversion of all exterior lighting systems that are not code compliant. Any
renovations that occur in the meantime will be designed in compliance with these new code
requirements.
Parks and Ball Fields
Parks Department has also worked hard to upgrade lighting fixtures in end-of-life situations to
dark sky compliant LED fixtures. This work is greatly supported by Operation Services and
their staff. A great example of this was the recent replacement of the sport lighting at Rolland
-of-the-art LED cutoff
fixtures. Park Planning and Development applied this technology first at the Old Fort Collins
ition, new parks are designed to dark sky compliant
standards and in alignment with the code.
Streetlights
Light and Power has studied and tested LEDs for streetlighting since 2013. They have been
actively replacing older high intensity discharge (HID) technologies (HPS, Mercury Vapor,
Metal Halide) with LED lights since 2015. Over the last 6 years, we have had a number of
Budgeting for Outcomes offers for streetlighting, with councils generally supporting an attrition-
based approach, wherein HID lights are replaced by LED lights as they fail. This has the benefit
of avoiding losing the stranded cost of the existing lights before their expected life span has been
reached, thereby maximizing prior investments. As of December 2020, about 4200 lights (~37%)
have been replaced with LEDs.
While the BUG ratings are useful for classifying fixtures for lighting trespass performance under
a broad brush, Utilities uses a more detailed point-by-point illuminance simulation for lighting
design and can select and place roadway lighting using a lighting pattern specific to the lights we
are purchasing. Prior to the development of the BUG ratings, Fort Collins Utilities purchased
-ion.
Full-cutoff lights should cast light towards the ground but not upwards. Since the year 2000, the
-cutoff lights and the post-
top lights used in residential subdivisions have also been specified with cut-off optics since
2004. There are still some older lights that are in service from the years before material
specifications were changed to incorporate full-cutoff optics. While L&P has been purchasing
full cutoff lighting where it was available for over 20 years, the change in technology from HID
allowing us to move more and more of our lights to the full-cutoff specification.
Our conversion process has been very carefully considered and is not a like-for-like illuminance
replacement (illuminance is a term that describes lighting intensity) of the existing lighting
levels. Based on information and measurements taken during our trials and early applications, we
learned the capabilities of LED lights, we have been able to improve lighting and, in many cases,
reduce overall illuminance levels because they can more accurately direct the light coming from
the fixture, and because the ability to choose the correlated color temperature allows us to better
use the portion of the spectrum that human eyes see at night. Our lighting
levels do change based on the type of roadway or intersection being lit and the expected activity
in the area, with target lighting levels and patterns selected using the recommended practices
from the Illuminating Engineering Society (IES) to meet those conditions. Those practices have
been reflected in LCUASS for prior lighting technologies, and we have recently collaborated
with Larimer County personnel to update the lighting sections to take into account the new
practices for LED lighting.
CC: Caryn Champine, Director, Planning Development and Transportation
John Stokes, Interim Director, Community Services
Paul Sizemore, Interim Director, Community Development and Neighborhood Services
Cameron Gloss, Long Range Planning Manager