The times are always changing, and in downtown Mount Vernon that will include lighting poles sometime in the next year.

Mount Vernon was selected as a pilot for Alliant Energy’s Smart Streetlight replacement program. Our community will be the first in the Iowa market that will get these lights.

While many members of city staff got to see some of these lights working on a recent trip to Platteville, Wis., and are excited about what they can do, there are still concerns with the new bells and whistles.

Take the ability for music to be played via the light poles during festivals. We get how that is extremely beneficial for announcements when it comes to incoming weather or for public safety in locating a missing child or other information. It’s nice to think of Christmas carols during Magical Night going from one end of the community to another. But we already had small groups of choir and band members providing that music at different areas of the festival. These speakers could increase noise pollution at the festival, causing people to speak louder to overcome background music and add a minor headache to those who struggle with hearing to enjoy festivals.

We also think having designated poles that can connect with first responders is a solid addition, but those buttons also add that ability for someone just to abuse the same purpose. We get that our law enforcement will still treat every call like the emergency it is and respond accordingly, but it’s a question that needs to be ironed out on how easily it takes to getting a response from first responders.

The idea of digital banners on lights, while we get they may be cleaner and easier to change than the traditional banners, also contributes more to light pollution in the uptown. Until we see them in use, it will be hard to determine if that’s as distracting as the neon in business storefronts that was a point of contention in the signage in uptown in the past.

We do agree having the ability to dim or reduce lights in times when people aren’t as frequent on the streets is a benefit for electric savings and would be interested to see how that usage impacts the electrical bills per year for the city as a cost savings initiative. There’s still a need for some lighting in the blocks of uptown during that time for public safety, but we can see that the lumens at 3 a.m. is not as important as the lumens at 10 or 11 p.m.

We get that the cost of updating new streetlights is not cheap and Alliant collecting data from our community and how we utilize these lighting poles during the numerous festivals in our community is a benefit to this community. We think there are items presented that raise concerns as much as excitement on the project.