Kenai completes streetlight assessment, eyes $1.9M federal grant

The Kenai City Council received a comprehensive assessment May 20 of the city's streetlight infrastructure. The report revealed aging LED systems and safety gaps that will guide future improvements and grant applications.

Brian Gaze, CEO of Avari Consulting, presented findings from a months-long inventory of more than 600 streetlights across Kenai. About 90 percent of the fixtures are LED but are nearing the end of their useful life. The lights show flicker, color drift, and other electrical issues. The city owns 266 of the lights. Homer Electric Association and the Alaska Department of Transportation and Public Facilities own the rest.

The assessment found that most school bus stops lack recommended illumination levels. That creates a safety concern during winter months when students access stops in darkness. Gaze said the fragmented ownership among three entities has produced inconsistent standards, fixture types, and maintenance practices across the city.

The city spends about $65,000 annually on contractor maintenance. Almost all of the maintenance issues trace to shorts on legacy direct-bury cable. Adam Miles, project engineer with DOWL Engineering, said the design guidelines developed for the city recommend replacing direct-bury wiring with conduit systems to reduce future maintenance costs.

City Manager Terry Eubank told the council that Public Works Director Kevin Fry submitted a grant application this week requesting $1.9 million from the U.S. Department of Transportation's Safe Streets for All program. The grant would fund improvements to Lawton Drive and Tinker Lane. Those improvements include redoing bike paths to make them go from 3-foot wide to 5-foot wide, making them ADA accessible, and upgrading street lighting in the area.

The application builds on a Safe Streets for All planning process the city participated in with the Kenai Peninsula Borough. That process identified the Lawton-Tinker corridor as an area needing improvement. Eubank said the streetlight assessment completed by Avari strengthens the grant application by documenting specific lighting deficiencies.

Gaze said the assessment also identified billing discrepancies where the city may be paying for lights that no longer exist. The consulting team provided GPS coordinates of all fixtures to help reconcile those discrepancies with utility providers.

The design guidelines recommend standardizing on three families of LED fixtures that align with Alaska DOT standards. That allows parts interchangeability across jurisdictions. The guidelines also call for lower color temperatures in sensitive wildlife corridors to reduce blue light that affects certain species.

The assessment includes a web-based photometric model that allows city staff to overlay lighting performance data with other geographic information such as collision histories and property boundaries. The model shows areas that are over-lit or under-lit relative to adjacent land uses.