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6.a Council Memo Lighting Ordinance 8.15.17Memorandum To: Scandia City Council Reference: Lighting Ordinance Amendment Copies To: Neil Soltis, City Administrator Brenda Eklund. Citv Clerk From: Sherri Buss, RLA AICP, Planner Date: Auaust 3. 2017 Background Project No.: 16323.000 Routing: The Council will hold a public hearing on a proposed ordinance amendment to the Lighting section of the Development Code at its meeting on August 15. The City Council requested that the Planning Commission review the Lighting section of the Code, and provide recommendations to the Council regarding the Lighting standards. The Planning Commission discussed the section at its meeting on August 1, and recommended the attached ordinance amendment to the Council for its approval. The City's recent consideration of a Site Plan for the expansion of Scandia Elementary School and site improvements identified the need for the ordinance amendment. The Lighting Plan for the project proposed additional lighting and replacement lighting using LED luminaires. The City's Development Code currently prohibits the use of LED luminaires in all zoning districts. This section of the ordinance is older, and staff are not sure why the prohibition was included. It may have been that when the section of the Code was adopted, LED lighting was not designed to be shielded or downcast, and there was a concern that the light from LED's would be too bright to meet the City's standards. The Scandia Architectural Design Guidelines were approved more recently, and permit the use of LED lights. LED luminaire have become the standard for most outdoor lighting because of their efficiency and low maintenance in comparison to other types of lighting. The Scandia Elementary School lighting plan demonstrated that LED luminaires are available that can meet the City's performance standards for outdoor lighting. Proposed Ordinance Amendment The proposed ordinance amendment includes removing the prohibition of LED lighting used in outdoor fixtures (Item 6, Prohibitions, item (D) deleted). The City Administrator suggested some additional changes to the ordinance as follows: An employee owned company promoting affirmative action and equal opportunity 444 Cedar Street, Suite 1500 Saint Paul, MN 55101 651.292.4400 tkda.com TKDA Memorandum To: Scandia City Council Reference: Lighting Ordinance Amendment Copies To: Neil Soltis, City Administrator Brenda Eklund. Citv Clerk From: Sherri Buss, RLA AICP, Planner Date: Auaust 3. 2017 Background Project No.: 16323.000 Routing: The Council will hold a public hearing on a proposed ordinance amendment to the Lighting section of the Development Code at its meeting on August 15. The City Council requested that the Planning Commission review the Lighting section of the Code, and provide recommendations to the Council regarding the Lighting standards. The Planning Commission discussed the section at its meeting on August 1, and recommended the attached ordinance amendment to the Council for its approval. The City's recent consideration of a Site Plan for the expansion of Scandia Elementary School and site improvements identified the need for the ordinance amendment. The Lighting Plan for the project proposed additional lighting and replacement lighting using LED luminaires. The City's Development Code currently prohibits the use of LED luminaires in all zoning districts. This section of the ordinance is older, and staff are not sure why the prohibition was included. It may have been that when the section of the Code was adopted, LED lighting was not designed to be shielded or downcast, and there was a concern that the light from LED's would be too bright to meet the City's standards. The Scandia Architectural Design Guidelines were approved more recently, and permit the use of LED lights. LED luminaire have become the standard for most outdoor lighting because of their efficiency and low maintenance in comparison to other types of lighting. The Scandia Elementary School lighting plan demonstrated that LED luminaires are available that can meet the City's performance standards for outdoor lighting. Proposed Ordinance Amendment The proposed ordinance amendment includes removing the prohibition of LED lighting used in outdoor fixtures (Item 6, Prohibitions, item (D) deleted). The City Administrator suggested some additional changes to the ordinance as follows: An employee owned company promoting affirmative action and equal opportunity Code Amendment - Lighting Page 2 Scandia City Councl August 15, 2017 • Clarification that the standards apply to outdoor lighting • Clarify that the standards do not apply to street lighting on City streets or State or County highways • Exempt traditional holiday lighting • Remove individually -lit letters from the list of prohibited lighting because requirements for Sign lighting are included in the Sign section of the Development Code • Remove a redundant standard—item 5 (C)6. • Remove the item requiring lighting setbacks from the right-of-way because many storefronts in the Village located at are the right-of-way line and could not meet the intensity standard. • Update the cross references in the section The Planning Commission agreed with the Administrator's recommendations, and discussed two additional issues related to outdoor lighting: • Commissioner Hogle stated that she and other residents use flashing anti -predator lights on their properties, and that this may conflict with the prohibition against flashing lights in Section 6. Commissioners discussed this issue and options to permit this specific type of flashing lights, but the Commission decided not to add language related to this type of lighting in the ordinance. • Commissioner Anderson stated that the bright lights at the City's recreational fields can be blinding to drivers, and he questioned whether the City's standards for the intensity and shielding of these lights should be applied to outdoor recreation lighting. The Commission requested that staff look at regulations in other communities, and identify whether other approaches are used to regulate recreational lighting. Staff findings. The Planner reviewed the zoning ordinances of other communities in Washington County, and found that the standards of these communities are the same or very similar to Scandia's standards. The Planner attached a section from the Outdoor Lighting Code Handbook developed by the International Dark Sky Association which was one of the few resources with recommendations for sports field lighting. The conclusions of the article are that newer light fixtures and lighting designs have better shielding and can reduce the glare and spill-over of sports field lighting. The City could consider lighting designed with better shielding and less spill-over when it considers replacing the lighting for its recreational fields in the future. Planning Commission Recommendation The Planning Commission unanimously recommended that the City Council approve the proposed ordinance amendment for Lighting. i support or pole where it is really needed, instead mounting the light on a building, pole or other structure located too far away from the area needing lighting to provide effective lighting. To avoid this bad lighting practice and difficult enforcement problem, it can be feasible to simply prohibit the use of such swivel -mounted luminaires. This approach is not suggested here in the USA Pattern Lighting Code since it is then difficult to allow possible legitimate and correct uses of such luminaires, though these are rarely seen. Even prohibiting luminaires with obvious swivel mounts may not completely address the problem of poorly adjusted or mounted hardware, as many luminaires have adjustment capabilities that are not obvious in catalog photographs but could still lead to compromised shielding. 5.02 Sports Lighting Lighting levels used for night sports are the highest commonly encountered in the ittime environment. ommended levels for social or eational sports, including most ricipal sports activities, range from to 500 lux (20 to 50 footcandles); !Is for professional play with large ctator attendance and television arage can reach 3000 lux (300 candles). Controlling trespass and e with such lighting levels is an eme technical challenge, requiring utmost in quality luminaires and .her, the lighting fixtures commonly d for sportsLighting can be huge rces of direct glare, not only to is nearby and at considerable ances from the sports fields, but to spectators and players actually g the fields. The brightest single rces of light visible in city nighttime landscape views are often these facilities. It is no surprise that such lighting is usually the single greatest source of complaint and neighborhood tension about lighting issues. In the past, available fixtures, lighting designs, and the general level of the sports lighting art often left little choice for communities and designers seeking to minimize spill and glare in sports lighting. Even today, some manufacturers and designers will claim that spill and uplight cannot be reduced much below those Unshielded Sports Li htin FuUy Shielded Sports Lighting (courtesy of Soft® Li htin In the past, available fixtures, lighting designs, and the general level of the sports lighting art often left little choice for communities and designers seeking to minimize spill and glare in sports lighting. Even today, some manufacturers and designers will claim that spill and uplight cannot be reduced much below those obtained with these older designs and fixtures. Fortunately, several manufacturers have begun producing well shielded, even fully shielded luminaires suitable for sports lighting, particularly for the most commonly encountered levels of lighting. These designs provide major reductions in off -field spill, and can entirely eliminate direct uplight in all but the brightest lighting levels required for professional level sports. Further, many feel that these designs deliver substantially improved lighting quality on the field for the players. Unfortunately, many facilities, particularly older ones, will continue to produce enormous amounts of light spill into adjacent areas, and both direct and reflected light into the sky. With quality designs using modern fixtures, these obtrusive effects can be considerably reduced, but the huge amounts of lighting required in some situations will always lead to some obtrusive impacts, even with the best design. Communities should be aware of the potential impacts. The location and alignment of new fields should be carefully considered. Technical specifications for sports lighting can be included in a lighting code that require fully shielded lighting where at all possible, and professional design and post -installation certification to assure that the standards are followed. 5.03 Wallpacks A common problem source is wallpacks, wall -mounted luminaires with optical elements (reflectors and/or refractors) that usually direct a large portion of their light at angles near the horizontal. They are unfortunately commonly used in inappropriate ways, often in attempts to minimize hardware expenses as described above under swiveled luminaires, giving rise to much glare and poor lighting. The typical plain unshielded wallpack is easily recognizable and, if its output is above the threshold for full shielding requirements, can be denied approval. Trouble may however arise if a user offers to install an "add-on" shield which many manufacturers offer for their products These add-on shields may be claimed to provide "shielding" or "cutoff," but rarely if ever provide true full shielding according to the definition of no uplight used in the Pattern Lighting Code (this is an example of the confusion regarding these terms: see Note 9.16: Shielding and cutoff terminology). The planning officials must be aware that such luminaires are almost never fully shielded, even after adding shields, and either deny approval or require complete photometric information to verify the complete elimination of uplight. Since for such low-cost fixtures adequate photometric information is often not available, or if available is Unsh elded Wallpack Wallpack with Internal Shield (but still not fiffly shielded). These add-on shields may be claimed to provide "shielding" or "cutoff," but rarely if ever provide true full shielding according to the definition of no uplight used in the Pattern Lighting Code (this is an example of the confusion regarding these terms: see Note 9.16: Shielding and cutoff terminology). The planning officials must be aware that such luminaires are almost never fully shielded, even after adding shields, and either deny approval or require complete photometric information to verify the complete elimination of uplight. Since for such low-cost fixtures adequate photometric information is often not available, or if available is