I've seen no mention by the city government of cutting back street lighting to save electricity costs. South Mathilda Avenue for instance has over 100 street lamps between Washington Avenue and Highway 101, and that is just on the central median strip. I'm not even counting all the fancy street lamps in the downtown development or on either side of the street.

There are so many lights that I occasionally see cars driving down Mathilda at night with their lights off.

Turning off half those street lights would certainly not hurt safety and might even improve it given that the current lights produce a lot of glare, and it takes time to adjust to the darker side streets when you turn off Mathilda.

Assuming the lights are 150 watts apiece, on for 10 hours a night on average and that the city can get electricity at $0.10/ kWh (residential rate is closer to $0.115/ kWh), the city could save $2,700 on energy costs every year for just this one section of one street.

I suspect that overall, the savings by cutting unnecessary lighting citywide could easily be upwards of $100,000 every year, exclusive of reduced bulb replacement costs.

Perhaps this doesn't sound like much of a savings in the overall budget picture, but if this inefficiency hasn't been considered, I'd bet there are a dozen others. And that is starting to add up to a significant fraction of the shortfall.

—Allen Takahashi, Sunnyvale


Planning is going down hill; so are city services

I have been a resident of our city for 33 years and in the past few years the direction of planning seems to be going downhill.

For example, the changes made recently to Canary Drive were costly and now we read that the city needs to trim their budget due to the recession. Are we going to get the same privileges?

Where the city used to prune our street trees every year or two, now it is four-five years; when the branches break off we have to call for the arborist to come.

Then there's the speeding on Inverness Way. I have complained numerous times to the Public Safety about cars driving as much as 50 mph. I personally followed one and clocked her doing 40 mph. All Public Safety would do was put out a "speed cart" for one day! Have we cut back on police officers?

And there's the idea of our maintaining our own sidewalks with our own money? This is the thought that was presented in a letter by Thom Mayer in the June 11 issue of The Sun. If the council decides to implement this change, there will definitely be a deterioration of the quality of our sidewalks and maybe each owner will maintain their sidewalk differently.

What happens when YOUR city trees crack my sidewalk because of growing roots? If you check your records, YOUR city tree in front of my residence cracked my driveway. If we wish to maintain city trees, it seems that the city is still responsible when the roots crack the sidewalk or my driveway.

Finally, there's the new buildings' appearance. Of course, as the saying goes, "Beauty is in the eye of the beholder," but I must say that those high-rise buildings next to the Mathilda R.R. overpass are indeed UGLY. Wouldn't it be wiser to have a planning architect develop an overall downtown city plan that looks acceptable to the majority of the citizens of Sunnyvale?

—Richard W. Clark, Sunnyvale


Spending big money for small projects not smart

I have concerns about the changes that were made to Canary Drive off of Inverness Way here in Sunnyvale.

The City spent $60,000 to make changes that include a traffic circle, a speed bump, and a small cement island-barrier at the intersection of Canary and Inverness. I personally find this an incredible waste of money.

My concerns include: the amount of money spent ($60,000), which seems excessive, especially given the current budget crisis and the number of devices (three) installed on one small street to slow traffic down which also seems excessive.

Some traffic is now being diverted to other streets, simply changing who's affected by the traffic going to/from Homestead to Inverness (and other streets in the neighborhood).

Canary Drive is approximately one-sixth the size of Inverness. Why spend so much effort and money on a small street when a bigger street in the same neighborhood with the same posted speed limit has at least the same problems and probably worse because it's so much longer?

The traffic circle, in particular, makes no sense to me given the amount of money it must have cost versus its affect on traffic.

The speed bump slows traffic to 10 mph when the speed limit is 25 mph. Why does traffic need to be slowed down so much?

The cement island at the intersection of Canary and Inverness seems like another waste of money. The only purpose I can see for it is to keep cars from cutting corners. Is the city going to install these at every corner, at what expense and for what benefit?

The City of Sunnyvale is considering making similar types of changes to other streets as well. Please make sure your voice is heard as to how you'd like our city to spend our tax dollars.

—Jean Batryn, Sunnyvale