"An LED lasts somewhere between 25 and 30 years," Councilor Tita Montero said at Seaside's September 14 City Council meeting. "So, whatever decision we are making tonight, that's going to last 25 to 30 years."
The council voted 4-2 that night to convert the city's remaining Pacific Power streetlights from high-pressure sodium to LED. Montero voted no, and so did Councilor Padraig Ansbro. The vote set a framework and a color. It did not settle how bright the light will be on a given block, or whether it will reach into a given bedroom window. That part comes later. It runs through a six-month waiting period that starts only after the new fixtures are up.
What the council approved, line by line
The motion in the draft minutes covers four things. It approves the LED Streetlight Conversion Plan framework. It lets City Manager Spencer Kyle finalize "the location-specific streetlight level schedule." It lets him sign the Pacific Power agreement and lock in available incentives. And it directs staff to wait six months before "routine post-installation shield requests are considered." Robin Montero, Christine Binnicker, Council President Seth Morrisey and Mayor Steve Wright voted yes.
About 528 fixtures are being replaced. Seaside already has 112 LED fixtures, which The Astorian put at 17.5% of the system. Kyle put the conversion cost at roughly $116,000. Energy Trust incentives cover $108,000 of that, which leaves Seaside paying about $8,000. Pacific Power handles repairs and maintenance on these lights, and the city pays the power bill, so lower electricity use goes straight to the city's savings.
Councilors also said the old sodium fixtures would fail over time and have to be replaced anyway. Doing it now costs less than doing it later. Mayor Wright described Pacific Power as having a virtual monopoly over the city's lighting, so all Seaside can do is say "yes." Whether to convert was largely out of the city's hands. The choices that were left concerned color, brightness and shielding.
Orange light, then 3,000 kelvin
Pacific Power offered two color temperatures: a warmer 3,000 kelvin and a cooler 4,000 kelvin. The city wants the warmer one because it is closer to the warm orange of the current lights. Pacific Power has identified the 3,000-kelvin fixtures as "dark sky compliant."
Brightness will depend on the street. Fixture output runs from roughly 3,000 to 20,000 lumens. Levels one and two are planned for most residential streets. Levels four through six are for places where cars and pedestrians interact frequently, which the article listed as schools, shopping centers and hospitals. Kyle described the guiding idea as "brighter isn't always better." Lighting should use the lowest level needed so it doesn't cause glare or overlighting.
Ansbro's objection was about how the light leaves the fixture as much as its color. "These are straight LEDs," he said. "They're not filtered, they're not diffused, they're not shielded. … As I drove around some of these neighborhoods, I noticed that these lights were shining into people's second story rooms." He said the lights "feel like Seaside is under interrogation instead of the warm, welcoming place it currently is." Even with Pacific Power's dark-sky rating, the two dissenting councilors were still worried about the effect on dark-sky tourism.
Kyle expects the change to stand out at first. "New LEDs will look noticeably different from the older orange/yellow high-pressure sodium lights," he said. "People may initially perceive a significant change simply because the color and direction of the light are different."
The lamps the city keeps for itself
The conversion leaves out the most photographed lights in town. The historic streetlamps along the Prom, the ones on the city's logo, are owned and operated by the City of Seaside, so they are not part of the Pacific Power project. Seaside's visitor bureau describes the 1.5-mile Promenade as lined with lampposts. The walkway itself began as a boardwalk in 1904, and work on the concrete Prom started in 1920.
Ownership is what separates the two systems. The city runs the oceanfront lamps directly. On the neighborhood streets behind the Prom, the city's influence comes through the framework, the level schedule and the shield process.
The sequence, as currently estimated
Pacific Power has not given a firm start date. The September 28 council agenda had no LED follow-up item. Its new business was water fluoridation and a sewer-engineering agreement. Using the estimates Kyle gave, the order looks like this:
- September 14, 2026. The council approves the framework and the six-month shield wait.
- Eight to 10 weeks after approval. Kyle estimated this is how long the project could take to finalize, which points to mid-to-late November at the earliest.
- About three weeks of installation. Crews are expected to replace roughly 200 fixtures a week. If finalization stays on that schedule, installation would likely run into December.
- Six months after installation. Routine shield requests can be considered. Pacific Power said the wait is meant to let locals adjust to the new lighting levels before any permanent changes are made. Pacific Power hasn't given a start date, so the six months could begin later than these estimates suggest.
The published sources don't say which streets go first. All of these dates are estimates and could move.
Why the six months matter more than the vote
The vote decided whether to convert and which color to use. The six-month window decides how the lights look in daily use. Once the new light is in place, the open questions are whether a residential street got the right level and whether a fixture is throwing light where it shouldn't.
Gearhart's version of the same program shows how shields work. In its presentation to that city, PacifiCorp offered optional shields and said they are an additional cost to the city. It also described the fixtures as full-cutoff even without add-on shields. Under Seaside's process, each shield is a request about one particular light. The published sources don't say who would pay for shields here. A request that names the pole, the street and what the light is reaching is the kind of detail that process can act on.
There are two ways to weigh in now:
- City Council public comment. Seaside's agendas let residents pre-register to speak in person or by Zoom or phone, or submit written comments. Spoken remarks are limited to three minutes.
- Pacific Power's forms. The utility has a streetlight outage form that asks for the state and city, and it notes that it doesn't maintain lights in every area. It also has a separate form to request a streetlight installation, change or removal. The public pages don't give residents specific instructions for asking for a glare shield.
For a shield on Seaside's new fixtures, the documented route is the city, because the council made shield requests part of its own post-installation process.
Up the road in Gearhart and Cannon Beach
Seaside isn't the only North Coast town working through this. Gearhart's council voted 5-0 on August 5 to go ahead with a Pacific Power LED conversion. The city administrator's August 28 report listed 119 lights at an estimated $25,894, with $21,415.65 in Energy Trust incentives. The agreement had to be done by a September 21 incentive deadline. The sources reviewed don't confirm whether it was signed.
Cannon Beach took a different route years ago. The city says it adopted residential and commercial exterior-lighting rules in 2014, described as "Dark Sky" amendments, and it directs lighting concerns to its code-complaint form. Seaside's approach is newer and set up differently. It rests on a utility contract, a street-by-street level schedule and a shield process that starts once residents have lived with the new lights for six months.
Once installed, the new fixtures are expected to last 25 to 30 years. How they light each street will depend on the requests that come in after the six-month wait.
Questions about how changes like this one might shape the feel of your Seaside street, now or when it's time to sell? Cindy Hawkins Colley has followed this town's council decisions for years and is glad to talk them through. Let's Connect.
