Streetlight Upgrade at a Town Meeting
A small town replaced 1,200 sodium streetlights with LED fixtures at a cost of $310,000. The utility reports that electricity for street lighting fell from $96,000 to $38,000 a year, and maintenance calls dropped by half, saving another $14,000 annually. The town borrowed the money at 3 percent, paying about $21,000 a year for 20 years. At a public meeting, one resident argued the town should have spent the money on road repairs, which residents notice daily. The council chair replied that the savings are "locked in" and that the loan will be repaid while the lights keep working for another decade after that. Not everyone was convinced; a few residents noted that the brighter white light makes sleeping harder on their street.
1. State the main point of the passage and support it with the annual figures.
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Main point: The town made a lighting upgrade whose financial case rests on yearly savings exceeding the yearly loan payment, but the decision still draws objections that the numbers do not answer.
The arithmetic behind the case
- Electricity: $96,000 − $38,000 = $58,000 saved per year.
- Maintenance: $14,000 saved per year.
- Total annual savings: $72,000.
- Loan payment: about $21,000 per year.
- Net benefit while repaying: roughly $51,000 per year.
Why that is the main point rather than a detail: every element of the passage - the cost, the two savings lines, the loan term, and the chair's reply - is organized around whether the upgrade pays for itself. The resident's road-repair objection and the sleep complaint are counterpoints to that case, not separate topics.
2. The council chair says the savings are "locked in." What must be true for that claim to hold, and what in the passage makes it less certain than it sounds?
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What the claim requires
- Electricity prices and usage stay at least near current levels, so the $58,000 gap persists.
- The fixtures keep failing at the reduced rate, so the $14,000 maintenance saving persists.
- The lights really do last a decade past the loan, as the chair asserts.
Why it is shakier than it sounds
- The savings are measured against a previous year's bills, not a guarantee about future rates. If electricity prices rise, the dollar gap can shrink even though LEDs use less power.
- The maintenance figure is "calls dropped by half" - an observed drop, not a contractual promise.
- The post-loan decade is a projection about equipment life that the passage never supports with data.
So "locked in" is best read as very likely to continue, not guaranteed.
3. Which conclusion would the resident who raised road repairs most likely endorse, and which would that resident probably reject?
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Likely endorse: "Even a project that pays for itself can be the wrong use of borrowed money if residents value other repairs more." This resident's objection is about priorities, not about whether the LEDs save money - the complaint is that road repairs are what people notice daily.
Likely reject: "The streetlight project does not save the town any money." Nothing in the resident's quoted argument disputes the figures; the objection is that the savings were committed without public debate about alternatives.
Why the distinction matters: the resident and the council chair are answering different questions. The chair is defending the return on investment; the resident is questioning whether that investment should have been chosen at all. Both can be right at once, which is why the meeting did not resolve the disagreement.
The sleep complaint is a third position - a cost the financial figures omit entirely, raised by other residents rather than the road-repair speaker.