Antique-style street lights have recently been replaced with LED equivalents, which residents say look out of place.
Resident Roger Sell said the lights should have been replaced with what was there.
“I would have thought you would have found a like-for-like LED version to replace them,” he said.
“It is a feature of your street when you move into it.”
Deputy mayor Malcolm Lyall, who lives in Prebbleton, said the new lights were a ‘style crime’, but they were much cheaper and more practical to install.
“I agree with them (the residents) they are a style crime. They look awful. They look absurd on the decorative poles that were put there.
“Like everything else at this time, we are staring a double-digit rate increase in the face and anything we can do to keep the rates down which is what people tell us they want us to do. It’s a rock and a hard place situation.
Lyall said the cost of upgrading the current antique style to LED was investigated, but decided it would be too expensive.
“To put in the decorative lights it was three or four times more expensive than the standard lights,” Lyall said.
The original lights were installed by the developer of the subdivision, with the responsibility now in the council’s hands to replace the ageing equipment.
Council head of asset management, infrastructure and property Murray England said it has been upgrading 9000 street lights across the district.
“Since 2017, the council has been upgrading these streetlights to LEDs as part of a nationwide effort co-funded by NZ Transport Agency Waka Kotahi,” Washington said.
“Changing to LEDs reduces the cost to our ratepayers and helps improve our carbon footprint.
“LEDs use less power, are cheaper to maintain, give less light pollution and have the ability for us to add remote connection so we can turn them up, down or off more easily.”
The council is in the final stages of the project, changing the last of its 5000 non-LED lights to new standard LED lights over this year.
The budget for the district for the project is $4,885,000 of which Waka Kotahi has provided $3,357,146 in co-funding.
