Seattle City Councilmember Bruce Harrell

Streetlight maintenance is a core service of Seattle City Light. Many cities throughout the country have prioritized the value of proper lighting in their neighborhoods and streets. You have asked me to fix the problem.

Therefore, we changed replacement strategies and are now using new lighting technology. By doing so, the Utility has answered my call for optimizing customer service. Trouble tickets for burned out streetlights continues to decrease. For example, there are currently only 33 trouble tickets for streetlights that need engineering work. In 2008, there were over 1,800 such tickets in the system. These are situations where the repair is much more than simply changing the bulb and parts need to be ordered or crews need to be scheduled.

There is more! We have elected to implement night time streetlight patrols to gather information on burned out arterial streetlights. This work will be done without the use of overtime on a graveyard shift from 11:00 pm -7:00 am. We started a 30-day trial on November 1st.

Arterial streetlights are difficult for the public to report because traffic moves at a higher rate of speed on arterials and drivers are less apt to stop and get the required information to report the streetlight. There are about 500 miles of arterial roadway in Seattle proper and 120 miles of arterial roadway outside of Seattle in cities served by City Light. There are approximately 32,000 streetlights on these arterial streets.

These are examples of City Light answering the call to improve streetlight maintenance, improve customer service and use new, efficient technologies.

Photo credit: flickr/citywalker

Proclamation issued at Full Council on November 8, 2010

Click to Enlarge

WHEREAS, The City of Seattle has led the nation in energy conservation programs since the 1970s, saving more than 13.3 BILLION kilowatt hours of power – enough to light one and a half cities the size of Seattle for a year; and

WHEREAS, Seattle City Light began its Twist & Save compact fluorescent light bulb (CFL) campaign in June 2007 with three participating retailers to encourage consumers to use energy efficient CFLs; and

WHEREAS, The average ENERGY STAR CFL is designed to last an average of 8,000 hours or approximately seven years in a typical household; and

WHEREAS, If every American household replaced just one incandescent light with an ENERGY STAR CFL, enough energy would be saved to light three million homes for a year, saving $600 million in energy costs, and preventing nine billion pounds of greenhouse gas emissions per year – equivalent to taking
800,000 cars off the road; and

WHEREAS, The average Seattle home has about 33 light bulb sockets, and the average CFL installed in a Seattle home saves about $4.50 per year in electricity costs – or, on average, as much as $150 in energy savings could be realized; and

WHEREAS, Today there are nineteen participating retailers with 66 locations where consumers can purchase discounted energy-saving ENERGY STAR CFLs; and

WHEREAS, CFLs can be recycled at several locations and Seattle City Light will continue its partnership with retailers and manufacturers to educate customers about proper CFL recycling at retail drop-off locations; and

WHEREAS, Seattle citizens have once again demonstrated their energy saving leadership by purchasing THREE MILLION Compact Fluorescent light bulbs since 2007, equating to energy savings that would power more than 54,000 homes for an entire year,

NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT PROCLAIMED BY THE MAYOR AND SEATTLE CITY COUNCIL THAT THE WEEK BEGINNING NOVEMBER 7th AND ENDING NOVEMBER 13th, 2010, SHALL BE CELEBRATED AS

TWIST & SAVE WEEK

Press Release: Nov. 4, 2010

Seattle City Light is better prepared to respond to winter storms this year thanks to a new outage management system that enhances coordination of service restoration efforts and the utility’s ability to share information about that work with customers.

“The Hanukkah Eve storm of 2006 demonstrated that we needed to modernize the tools and systems we use to respond to power outages,” Superintendent Jorge Carrasco said. “Our new outage management system allows dispatchers, call center representatives and others who are responding to outages to share information in real time, including the cause of an outage and estimates for restoration of service.”

“We can’t eliminate the winter storms that will still bring power outages to our area,” Carrasco said. “But this tool will help us better inform our customers and make it easier for our crews to identify the reason for an outage and get it fixed.”

The Oracle-based software uses customer calls and monitors on large “feeder” line breakers to identify outages. As dispatchers assign crews, repair crews identify the cause of an outage and make repairs, that information is immediately shared with everyone else using the system. Additionally, customers can check outage information anytime using a map on City Light’s website. Information on the map is updated every 15 minutes. It can be found at http://www.seattle.gov/light/sysstat/.

“The Outage Management System is an investment in new technology for better customer service,” adds City Councilmember Bruce Harrell, chairman of the Council’s Energy, Technology, and Civil Rights Committee. “The new outage tracker map will give customers the information they want quickly and efficiently as we enter storm season.”

Continue Reading »

Press Release: November 1, 2010

The Seattle City Council presented a Proclamation recognizing the lifetime work of Alan “Al” Sugiyama, who among other great efforts, co-founded the Asian Family Affair newspaper in 1972 and promoted Asian American history throughout the 70’s.

Mr. Sugiyama is regionally and nationally respected for his integrity, courage, and tireless commitment to our youth and our community. His efforts helped to end misrepresentation of Asian Americans in the media.

Click to Enlarge

“The City Council is proud to present this proclamation highlighting the hard and distinctive work of our friend, Al Sugiyama,” stated Councilmember Bruce Harrell. “He has served more than 26,000 high-risk youth in King and Snohomish counties by finding innovative alternatives to transition kids into productive and fruitful lives.”

In 1979, Mr. Sugiyama established the Center for Career Alternatives (CCA). For 30 years, Mr. Sugiyama’s work as executive director for CCA helped to create and foster spaces where disadvantaged adults and youth in King and Snohomish counties can go for free education, employment and career training.