Loma Portal Residents Protest Removal of Historic Lampposts

On Wednesday, November 22, nearly 50 Loma Portal residents surrounded an historic lamppost in the middle of the street, linked hands and chanted, “Save our street lamps!” At one point, the protesters began moving around the street lamp. They formed up for a brief rally and a couple of people spoke.

Earlier, locals had noticed city crews taking down lampposts near Poinsettia and Lotus. Some are older than 100 years. And the call went out to gather – by phone and email and Nextdoor.

And gather they did. People like Elaine Burrell helped organize the protest. She shared her sentiment and those of her neighbors with CBS8:

“I know the electrical is old style and it might take a little more effort and labor but we are all tax payers here. Our taxes can go toward that sort of work to improve the neighborhoods, to fix the lampposts rather than destroy, remove and replace them with unsuitable lampposts for our community.

“They mean charm and beauty and history of our community. The lampposts represent safety and security for our children and our families.”

Burrell had created a book about the history of Loma Portal, and described its lampposts as significant.

Kim Leary said, “I saw a bunch of them coming down yesterday and it was horrifying to me. I just got on the Nextdoor site and said help us. Our lampposts are in danger and these people showed up immediately.”

Robert Allenby is a 60-year resident of Loma Portal, and said:

“They are poles that we decorate every holiday season. It’s the fabric of our community. It defines who we are and it always has been.”

Residents acknowledge many of the old lampposts haven’t worked for quite some time. They’ve been trying to get the city to fix them.

CBS 8 reached out to the city and received this in response:

The scope of the Plumosa Park Series Circuit Conversion project is to update the circuitry of the streetlights and replace the poles, which are both nearing 100 years old. While the streetlights are old, they are not in a historic district and, therefore, are not historic themselves. The circuitry will be updated to be more reliable and wired so that if one light goes out, the rest will stay on while the one that is out is repaired. The actual luminaire will be updated to LED technology, which is more energy-efficient and will last longer between replacements.

When streetlight poles have reached the end of their useful life, they begin to lose their structural integrity in both the pole’s interior and the foundation. Preservation of poles requires additional analysis and typically results in added costs and new components to retrofit the poles with updated connections and luminaires. The restored poles are not anticipated to have the same life expectancy as a new pole and foundation, resulting in additional costs and maintenance by City crews in the future. For those reasons, this project included the replacement of the poles instead of restoration or retrofitting of existing elements.