As recently as November, Tamaqua Borough officials were considering the possibility of purchasing the streetlights outright from PPL. However, the go-live of the LED tariff, as of Jan. 1, may have made that a nonviable option.

Council members spent a significant amount of time discussing whether or not purchasing the lights was still something that would be feasible at Tuesday night's regular council meeting.Council President David Mace and borough manager Kevin Steigerwalt outlined a new program that is available through PPL. According to Steigerwalt, the borough would pay a one-time, upfront fee of $714 and file the paperwork to enroll in the program. Once in the program, PPL would replace the 483 streetlights in the borough with LED fixtures. This would take two to three months to complete.The bottom line is the borough would save approximately $100 a month and PPL would still own and be responsible for the maintenance and upkeep of the fixtures.Councilman Dan Evans questioned why the savings to the borough would only be $100 per month, when the amount of electricity estimated to be used would be almost cut in half. Steigerwalt explained the difference was to cover the cost of the replacement lamps. Evans said he felt there could be "bigger money" in the project for the borough, and requested holding off on a motion to enter into the agreement until more research could be done into other options.Mace said he doubted whether the borough could purchase the fixtures after the replacements were installed."It is not a good business model for them (PPL)," he said. Councilman Tom Cara said if borough employees took on the light replacement themselves, it could run into the hundreds of thousands of dollars and it would be years until the borough could recoup their expenditures, if ever."This keeps us from spending the money to replace the lights, and we're $1,200 to the good," he said.Resident Edith Trevorah said she had called PPL to replace a burned-out light in front of her house, and two days later, the light was replaced."If you consider that they're maintaining the lights, my opinion is to go with PPL," she said.Ultimately, council approved the motion to enter into the agreement with PPL to replace the sodium vapor lights with LED lights. Mace said that although the new light fixtures supply the same amount of light as the old ones, because it's a white light, it will appear brighter and cleaner. At this point, there is no estimated time for the replacement project to begin.