Lights out on Washington Ave
The two blocks of Washington Ave from Tucker (12th) to 14th were designed to be special – low curbs, special paving and unique lighting in the center of the street.
The paving & lights were a symbolic zipper — a nod to the areas origins in garment manufacturing. But with numerous lights going out the zipper is disappearing. We build the stuff but then stop maintaining it. If we are not going to maintain it we shouldn’t build it.
– Steve Patterson
Hopefully it will be fixed that you now posted it? Do you think it is possible to continue that special paving/lighting all the way down to 6th street? How much was it for that section when they first made it?
Agreed, but there also needs to be a balance between unique/better design and maintainability. The hard reality is that it's always easier to find funding for something new, complete with a ribbon cutting and photo ops, than it is to find the funds needed to do maintenance right – it's just way too easy to cut 5% here and 10% there until the maintenance budget becomes more of a concept/vision than a reality. Unfortunately, all the special lighting on Washington is one of those design decisions that was probably destined to fail, give the assumption that it would be high maintenance in the public realm . . .
when you see street lights out etc, to whom are you supposed to report the problem? we should start an email campaign to resolve the issue.
These sorts of minor repairs should all be taken care of using a CID. You could set the rate super low and still have more than enough money annually to take care of these issues and most people probably wouldn't notice the difference on their bill. I certainly wouldn't rely on the city getting around to fixing any of it…
The lights are in a Community Improvement District.
Then why the disrepair? Are the collected funds still helping to repay infrastructure upgrades?
Adam,
The city website gives you a phone number to report lights out.
http://stlouis.missouri.org/government/csb.html
It is the Citizen's Service Bureau. I have never tried contacting this office.