The area of Grafton and Peters is going to be kept in the dark for now, after residents? request to have a street light installed was denied.
Ten residents from Grafton submitted a petition to the Orion Township Board asking that a street light be installed at the intersection.
No one from Peters signed the petition.
The cost to install a street light is $300-400, and the annual operating cost can be $200-400 a year.
In the past, the township board has required residents to pay for the light installation, but only in areas where the light request met township criteria.
At the Oct. 17 board meeting, trustees decided the area of Grafton and Peters did not meet those criteria.
‘A lot of the criteria were established partly because of traffic, but also for a particular location, where young people might have need to stand by the side of the road,? said clerk Jill Bastian
‘Some places that might have lights because they were bus stops might not be anymore.?
Among the possible criteria for a street light, as listed by the township, are: Heavy traffic intersection (both ways), heavy traffic intersection (one way), or blind or sudden intersections with nearby curves or hills.
Also on the criteria list: A school bus stop is more than a certain number of feet from the nearest home, or medium traffic intersections in especially fog-prone areas.
Regarding criteria for subdivisions, the township generally does not put street lights in interiors of subdivisions except for school bus stops or near public or subdivision parks.
Lieutenant Bruce Naile, commander of the Oakland County Sheriff’s Department Orion Substation, said the OCSD would like to see street lights at all the intersections in the township, but due to cost realized that’s not practical.
?(Grafton and Peters) is not a high crime area, or a high accident area,? Naile said.
According to Naile, recently the township as a whole had been experiencing a lot of larcenies from vehicles, but not an extreme amount in the Judah Lake area.
‘Part of that is neglect of people leaving their cars unlocked and things in the vehicle,? he said.