The Birmingham age-herald., 1924-03-12
Forum Of The People
Commissioner Harrison On Street Lights


 notice an editorial in your issue of Mon day, Marc6 10, headed Inadequate Street Lighting" in which you very severely crltl- cize the city commission on street lighting and state that complaints are made from all parts of the city. I do not know from what source you obtained that information, ana lt seems very strange that such complaints would be made to The Age-Herald, who has no authority in the premises, instead of to myself or the city commission who has fuil authority in such matters.
 .. l would not attempt to answer thls edito- rial were, it not for the fact, of it's manifest unfairness and misrepresentation of the facts of the true situation. and also my own lopin- ion that your criticism is apparently intended to create an impression with the public that the city commission and myself are dereilct in this matter and are making no efforts to- ward effective improvement of street light ing conditions. I am more convinced than ever that your position is only one of criti- cism when only day or so ago one Of your reporters called on me with regard to i've downtown locations which he said were with out lights that they had received complaints of Upon his own investigation he found that three of these locations had street lights and that street lights had been ordered for the other two. He informed me that he had been instructed to write story on this but after such investigation had found that there was no story in it. But despite that fact to my surprise there appeared on the front page of The Age-Herald the next inorn- ing great long sensational story about bad street lighting conditions based upon these five lights mentioned. Who is responsible for that story or this editorial does not matter to me. As long as you are fair and just and state the facts is all am interested in.
 The inferences that you draw in your edi- -torial that street lighting is evidently di- rected by municipal political consideration xNytfl tion, as every street light that is ordered in by the city is done by the street light inspec- tor upon investigation by him as to it's need location and service Of course, we do not assume to say that there is a street light at every location where there should be one, and probably where they have been recOm- mended by the street inspector. We are now putting in about many lights per day as the street lighting force of the Birmingham Railway, Light and Power Company are able to put them in and have been doing this since making the new street lighting contract We have ordered in and installed under this new contract about 175 new lights and we are still ordering them in and installing them right along. At the time. this new contract was made there were about 800 street lights recommended and on the list for installation.
 You criticized the size of the lights and state that they are small power type and afford little relief Our contract price on these llghtS are SlS TOT lOO candle power lights $36 for 250 candle power lights and SIS for 400 candle power lights. In practi- cally all our downtown sections we have installed the arc light or 100 candle power lights. In other semi-congested centers we have 250 candle power lights, and in most of our resident section it is all 100 candle power lights. These 100 candle power lights give very good satisfaction to the residential dis tricts and enables us tP put in more of them, thereby distributing the lighting bene- fits, than we could if we put in large lights. Of course, we have also got to be governed by the amount of money that is available for the installation of street lights.
 l am not thin-sknned about criticism. recognize that q public official is subject to criticism in various forms. l invite honest criticism, but when an editorial like yours and q front page news story with little or no basis, in fact, is written which misrepre- sents the facts and apparently is intended to create false impressions then 1 think it is time to call halt in such Il matter. I am the city commissioner having Jurisdiction of street lighting, hence the reason make an- swer to your editorial and news statements on this question.
 WM. II. HARRISON.
 Commissioner of Public Utilities.
 Birmin gham, Ala March 10 1921