A flicker of light
We had our library lights replaced less than four years ago, and in that time, there are now more out than when we replaced the original lights from 1978. The city guys are telling me the contractor didn't put a ballast into the fixtures (and didn't for the rest of the building a few months after they did the library), so without that to regulate things, the fixtures are burned out.
It's been so long they're not under warranty, so there's been talk of starting over with LED fixtures. Won't require completely replacing the fixtures this time, just the guts, but it's still $$$ we don't have. I'm looking at 20 lights completely out, just over half the lights in the main part of the library, with some areas lit up by a single light. Right now we're in a mini-Spring, so it's light outside and offsets our lack of lights, but if we go into dark and gloomy Winter again, it's going to look really bad.
They've got an electrician doing some work in the auditorium for the temporary housing of the police and EMS (temporary is going to be about a year), and they're supposed to come look at our lights for a second opinion. There's a slim chance we could threaten to sue the contractor who did the work, because if they intentionally left out the ballasts to save money, they did not provide all the parts necessary as claimed in their bid. Not sure how much merit a suit would have, but threatening to say in public might scare them enough to fix it. Our taxpayers who paid for their work here might avoid hiring them personally due to shoddy work.
I just hope they do something while they've got people here who can do work. [fingers crossed]
It's been so long they're not under warranty, so there's been talk of starting over with LED fixtures. Won't require completely replacing the fixtures this time, just the guts, but it's still $$$ we don't have. I'm looking at 20 lights completely out, just over half the lights in the main part of the library, with some areas lit up by a single light. Right now we're in a mini-Spring, so it's light outside and offsets our lack of lights, but if we go into dark and gloomy Winter again, it's going to look really bad.
They've got an electrician doing some work in the auditorium for the temporary housing of the police and EMS (temporary is going to be about a year), and they're supposed to come look at our lights for a second opinion. There's a slim chance we could threaten to sue the contractor who did the work, because if they intentionally left out the ballasts to save money, they did not provide all the parts necessary as claimed in their bid. Not sure how much merit a suit would have, but threatening to say in public might scare them enough to fix it. Our taxpayers who paid for their work here might avoid hiring them personally due to shoddy work.
I just hope they do something while they've got people here who can do work. [fingers crossed]