West 7th residents question plan for street lights

Dee Blank can see far away galaxies from her backyard on West Seventh Street.

“The farthest thing you can see with the naked eye is Andromeda Galaxy, and it’s 2.5 million light-years away,” Blank told Whitefish City Council last week. “I can see it from my backyard. Next year, will we be able to see Andromeda from this neighborhood?”

Blank, along with Judy Hessellund, asked the city to reconsider a plan to install street lights along West Seventh when the street is reconstructed this summer.

“It’s nice to have the dark skies,” Hessellund said. “From my big windows I can watch the fireworks on [Big Mountain.] Once all the lights come on, I won’t be able to.”

West Seventh is set to undergo a major reconstruction from Baker Avenue to Fairway Drive. Steep intersections will be improved, the roadway will be realigned, and an off-street pedestrian path and sidewalk will be installed. The city will upgrade the corridor to include decorative lighting and plans to experiment with LED fixtures with the goal of energy savings.

City public works director Craig Workman says street lights are an important safety feature for the new pedestrian paths.

“We can’t have a bike path and not have lighting,” he said. “When we’re doing bike path projects we have a responsibility to provide safety lighting. I respect the desires of the neighborhood. We have the lighting designed to be the minimum and it’s not going to be a wash of light.”

Still, Blank said the character of the neighborhood was supposed to be taken into consideration in the new street design. 

“This is a quiet, low density, edge-of-town neighborhood,” Blank said. “It includes pasture and forest, and is where the new James A. Bakke Nature Preserve is located.” 

She says street lights won’t deter accidents or crime, noting that pools of light can create “shadows and hiding places.” 

Blank believes the blue hue of LED bulbs will make light pollution worse and questions how much the lighted pedestrian path will be used.

“For whom, when?” she asked. “In the summer it doesn’t get dark passed 10 p.m., and in the winter it won’t be plowed. How useful is a street light shining at 3 a.m. when no one is using it.”

“I have hope for the energy efficiency of properly designed LED lighting, but Seventh Street from Karrow to Geddes is the wrong place to test this,” she said.

Councilor Frank Sweeney sympathized with Blank’s concerns, saying street lights on the western portion of the project weren’t in keeping with the desires of the neighborhood.

“The presentation tonight was consistent with all I ever heard from those that would be affected by street lighting,” he said at last week’s meeting. 

The construction plan breaks West Seventh Street into four distinct areas, which becomes more rural farther to the west.

From Fairway to Karrow, the design calls for a narrower street at 22 feet with no curb and gutter, and no off-street path. From Karrow to Baker, the street will be 25 feet wide and will include curb and gutters. 

The off-street path will be 10-feet wide constructed of asphalt from Karrow to Geddes, then from Geddes to Baker the path will be 8-feet wide constructed of concrete. 

In addition, a path will connect from Geddes Avenue heading north and ending near the intersection of Flint Avenue and West Sixth Street.

Construction is expected to begin in May and be completed in September for the $2.8 million resort-tax funded project. The city expects to hold a public information meeting on the project in April.