Fuchsia Dragon | [email protected]
Jasper’s streets could soon light up with energy-efficient LED lamps.
The town’s electric provider, ATCO, has offered council a program which would see most of Jasper’s street lights switched to dark sky approved lights at no extra overall cost to council or Jasper citizens.
Instead of council paying for a conversion from their own reserves from council tax, ATCO can replace the streetlamps with the town paying them back over time.
The costs would be offset by the reduced costs in running LED lamps and ATCO estimates the council would save $5 per lamp per year.
Most of Jasper’s streetlights are High Pressure Sodium (HPS) lights and some are LED that council has installed, like ones along Connaught Drive.
Kent Miller, from ATCO, said Jasper has about 470 streetlights, 123 are already LED and about 300 are eligible for this program.
Blooming success
Jasper’s flowering efforts paid off this year as the Communities in Bloom judges gave the town an excellent score.
The international judges came to Jasper in July and looked at tidiness, environmental action, heritage conservation, urban forestry, landscape and floral displays.
And at the award ceremony in Yarmouth, Nova Scotia, on September 28 Jasper was rated 5 Blooms Silver with a special mention for Grassroots Waste Reduction.
The town also won the Scotts Community of Gardeners Award.
Councillor Jenna McGrath said: “A big thank you to all the volunteers, the staff who volunteered on a daily basis and to the residents.”
Un-moveable wall
When the moveable wall in the activity centre got stuck, workers had to use a crow bar to get it closed and now it’s stuck.
But thanks to other repairs coming in under budget the now un-moveable wall should be replaced soon.
$120,000 was allocated for replacing flooring and fixing the kitchen wall at the hall but the wall had less damage than expected.
Council voted this week to spend the leftover $50,000 on the moveable wall and ceiling tile replacement - a project that was in the 2020 budget already.
Councillor Helen Kelleher-Empey said: “I am in favour of supporting this because it is in the budget.
“Congratulations on getting the wall at a lower price.”
