Lighting the way to a better Montrose

The Glendale City Council’s decision to pay for new pedestrian

lighting on Honolulu Avenue, in the Montrose Shopping Park, makes

good sense for one overarching reason:

It’s too dark up there.

After months of discussion in the Montrose community, and some

needlessly stern rhetoric from one council member about how Montrose

doesn’t really need new lights, the council voted 3-1 Tuesday (Rafi

Manoukian was absent) to spend between $473,000 and $627,500 on the

project.

City staff and Montrose representatives will get together soon to

pick one of three options for the new lights: Sternberg-style lamps

like those in Kenneth Village; twin-globe cast-iron lights like the

ones on Broadway; or Poulson-style lamps, like those on Brand

Boulevard. The Sternberg lighting would be the cheapest, the Poulson

style the most expensive.

Regardless of what gets picked, it’ll be an improvement for

Honolulu. The area, as inviting a place to stroll as one can find in

Glendale, becomes unintentionally forbidding at night, as many of the

businesses there close at 6 or 7 p.m., taking their storefront

lighting with them. That plunges long stretches of the sidewalk into

darkness, especially around the crosswalks, where lighting installed

more than a decade ago often casts shadows thanks to trees.

Relatively short when the lights were installed, the trees have

grown, as trees tend to do, and their branches and leaves are

creating shadows that only add to the darkness.

Discussion at Tuesday’s council meeting swirled around whether

spending money on the lights was a fiscally prudent thing to do,

since it was not budgeted for the 2003-04 budget year. Councilman

Dave Weaver, who appears to be feuding with Montrose as a whole, was

adamant about not buying new lights, while saying he would be happy

to vote for them if they were budgeted in 2004-05. Weaver also didn’t

buy the public-safety argument about the lights, noting that he had

not heard of any crime wave in Montrose recently, or outbreak of

tagging, that required better lighting as a deterrent.

He’s right about that last part, but this really isn’t a

public-safety issue. (It’s also not an Army Corps of Engineers fiscal

management issue, but that’s another story.) It’s about making

Honolulu Avenue a welcoming place to walk after dark, and about

responding to the needs of a large group of citizens who’d like new

lights there. Simply put, it’s about not having it be so dark up

there.

On top of that, it’s a relative bargain. Be it $473,000 or

$627,500, installing new lights on Honolulu is a drop in the bucket

for Glendale’s massive budget, millions of dollars of which remain

unallocated. The money will come from the Public Service Department

reserves, which can easily handle the relatively small hit.

Kudos to the council for not being afraid to stray from the usual

budget process and for OKing the project. And to those who enjoy a

post-sunset stroll through the Montrose Shopping Park ... well, let

there be lights.