The age-herald., 1901-01-11
h Greater Number Than Ever
 Before in Birmingham
AT GREATLY LESS EXPENSE
Nearly Thirty New Lights and There Will be Eighty Others This Year. Mayor Drennen Tells All About
 the city's Lighting.

"Twenty-seven additional electric lights of 2COO candle power have been placed in the streets of Birmingham since the first of last September, and at every regular meeting of the City Council provision is made for more and more of such lights, several of them being now in process of erection," said Mayor Drennen yesterday in answer to an inquiry as to why the city wasn't better lighted.
 I've have 209 street lights of 200O candle power burning all night, as compared with 1S2 such lights four months ago, and others are being put up as rapidly as possible.
 We now pay $50 year for each light, as compared to an average cost of $lO3.50 each light previous to last September.
 By the old contract the city had with the electric light company, which expired at the beginning of September, the clty was paying the company $10s a year for each of the first 150 lights and $102 year for each light in excess of 150. We felt that this was too much, and the City Council provided for an investigation to show whether the city could profitaby construct an electric light plant or its own. A com mttee went to Jacksonville Fla, to inspect the municipal light plant there, and passing their views of what they ascertained there and from other sources, the members Of the committee came to the conclusion that Birmingham could build plant and supply its own lights at something like $S0 for each light, provided that some 250 or 300 lights were required but that if the city were properly lighted, with 600 lights, these could be produced at from $e0 to $65. The total cost of so many lights, however, would have been far more than the city could af- ford to pay and so when the present eee- tric light company agreed to give us lights at $50 each we considered that a great bar gain for the city and at once came to an agreement, signing new contract to run tor five years.
 Birmingham is now paying an average of $23 year less for each 1000 candle power street light than the city was paying previ- ouS ito last September.
 And we are putting in additional lights as rapidly as practicable. As I have said, we have twenty-seven more lights, costing an additional $2, 160 year, than we had in the first week of September During the course of the present year we shall add Seventy-five or eighty more lights say eighty, and it must be borne in mind that those eighty additional lights will cost the taxpayers $6,400 year!
 ''lt is all well enough for people to cry out for more lights and certainly the city ou6Ht tO nave uOTe-lOuT more al cost of some $30,000 year-but Birming- ham simply hasn't got the money to pay for them. It will take all the city govern ments ability, with prospective revenues to make both ends meet
 And it is unreas asonable to claim that whenever a man may build a house in a lonely district he shall have a 2,0O0-candle power light in front of his door That is unreasonable now, when the city revenues are inadequate, but it would be so even if the. treasury were overhowing.
 The same is true of hydrants, which like electric lights should be the outcome of the citys upbuilding, the occupation of waste places, and not the fixtures of arbitrary rules, regardless of the popula- tion of an immediate neighborhood.
 "Time is required to supply new and growing city with all the street lights and yenience and we'll being of the inhabitants.
 ''So with police. We have increased the police force far as we had the money to pay policemen. We can't get men to work for nothing, and we haven't had the money to pay additional more policemen than the city has in its service
 'The city government is doing the best 1t can with the revenue al It's disposal; it is not denying the public anything within its power to pay for, and it seems to me strange that this perfectly plain proposi- tion of dollars and cents does not impress the mind of every citizen who has a fair mind, and who is willing to read the figures of the city's income and necessary out lay"