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It’s dark on moonless nights in Portola Valley, due in part to longstanding rules that discourage residents from the use of outdoor lights that interfere with pedestrians’ views of the stars. Lights triggered by movements of people and other creatures have been particularly held in disfavor.
That touchstone is expected to fade away. Motion-sensitive lights are now encouraged by the Town Council, which on July 11 unanimously approved measures that update the town’s residential design guidelines (by resolution) and the municipal code (by ordinance).
By its votes, the council took the first step of a two-step process to enact a new ordinance on outdoor lighting. The changes go into effect 30 days after the council votes a second time on the ordinance, a step that usually takes place at the following council meeting.
Under current rules, motion sensors are associated with flood lights, which the guidelines call “inappropriate” and to be avoided. The new law will prohibit flood lights and encourage motion sensors to be used with low-intensity, downward-facing illumination that is sufficient to light a walkway or doorway. The sensors must not respond to movements beyond a property line, and must meet standards of the International Dark Sky Association.
The town will be applying for membership in the association, Town Hall staff said.
The legislation is the result of extended analysis by the town’s Architectural & Site Control Commission and the Planning Commission in the wake of two brutal home-invasion robberies.
The 2016 robberies triggered a community movement to improve safety and discourage crime. Cameras now record the license plates of every vehicle entering or leaving town, and residents have formed, so far, 32 neighborhood watch groups that cover about a third of all households, according to town spokesman Ali Taghavi.
No strings of lights
The revised residential design guidelines advise residents to restrict the use of lights to doorways and trash areas, to direct them inward toward a property’s center rather than toward property lines, to use lights from the warmer end of the visible spectrum so as to avoid negative effects on animals, and to equip them to shut off automatically.
Along with the prohibition of flood lights, other types of lights now banned include up-lights, searchlights and strings of lights – such as festoon or cafe lights. Holiday lights would be allowed for no more than 60 days per calendar year.
In discussing the character of a light, the reference is to lumens, a measure of brightness, rather than to watts, a measure of energy used.
“Clearly a lot of work has gone into this,” Councilman Craig Hughes said at a recent meeting in which the council commented on a draft of the ordinance. “Generally, it’s exactly the update I was hoping for.”
The town should alert people to the changes with a flyer so they’re aware before submitting plans for new construction or remodeling projects, Councilman Jeff Aalfs said.
Councilwoman Ann Wengert called the ordinance “a great set of changes (that is) overdue.”
“A great job,” architect and Mayor John Richards said. “Bringing us into the present century is a good idea.” Richards added that he thinks people tend to overestimate the amount of light they need to walk around outdoors at night.
Walking on dark streets with no sidewalks and speeding cars inches away is suicide. Better to rev up the SUV like everyone else. As Sarah says, drill baby drill!
Sense when do you need the approval of an International association. We don’t follow International Law and that is where the council seems to be headed. We always had flood lights on all four corners of our home that we turned on with a light switch. If the dog barked or we heard something outside we flipped the switch. When we were satisfied there wasn’t an unwanted guest on the property we just turned the lights off. Now just how complicated is that. If we were not sure who was out there we turned the dog loose on them. We all had flood lights, dogs and guns and the outside world knew not to come in our neighborhood or they would pay dearly. We had no need to lock our doors when we were home because this approach to preventative personal security worked just fine. Knock Knock y’all use common sense and stop trying to dictate behavior to everyone that have paid millions to live in the Valley.
There is a place for light sensors but flood lights going on and off all night can drive your neighbors nuts. Dictating the type of light bulbs is none of the councils buisness in most cases except on an individual case basis. A one size fits all is not in line with living in PV. Privacy is what most residents want when they moved here and that goes for intruding on them from outside their property by over stepping city government.
Chris. —
It’s called “let’s pretend we live in the country” even though we don’t. We are in a suburb of San Francisco, and the sooner we accept that the sooner our town governments can get out of our shorts and let us enjoy our own property without absurd planning and building regulations and processes designed to preserve something that never existed in the first place. Traffic is not going to become quieter, airplanes are going to fly over, and the lights from San Jose to San Francisco are not going to get dimmer. That’s why it’s called Suburbia.
People who want silent and pitch-black nights should move to a place where that’s possible and leave the rest of us alone.
I think Chris has a completely valid point. Portola Valley definitely isn’t suburban. Menlo Park and Palo Alto would fit that bill. However, PV/Woodside maintain their rural characters and it’s part of why people pay incredible amounts of money to live here. So let’s respect our towns characters, and preserve the remainder of rural-ness that we have left.
PV Resident. — did you actually read Chris’s post? I agree with everything said there. Both of us appear to agree that PV and Woodside should stop micromanaging tiny aspects of our properties that have no significant impact on our neighbors.
Using the dictionary.com definition of suburb: “a district lying immediately outside a city or town, especially a smaller residential community“: Palo Alto and Menlo Park, both having grid-organized and extensive business districts, are both cities, and Portola Valley is a “residential community immediately outside” of them. I’m sorry you’re embarrassed by that, but you need to admit it: you live in suburbia. You do not live in “the country” nor in a rural area. “The country” and “rural areas” are not cut up into 1-3 acre plots with 4,000 sq ft houses on them. THAT is suburbia. A few trees and grassy hillsides do not make a place rural. That’s just landscaping. You need among other things far more sparse population to call yourself “rural”. Woodside and PV quit being rural 80 years ago when all the farm land was being subdivided and the road and house building began. Plant all the trees and extinguish all the lights you want, but it’s never again going to be rural.
Rural areas do not have license plate readers.
Awatkins:
I fully agree that Woodside/PV have no authority trying to influence how we manage our own estates, especially with such insignificant or trivial matters. That is something that completely makes sense.
However, I do disagree with you about how Portola Valley is a “suburb” according to you. Think about it in context with the entire Bay Area. It’s rural. When compared to the rest of America, of course, it’s suburban. But I am comparing to other communities within the Bay Area because this is a local issue.
I applaud the volunteers who developed these new guidelines. It is a pleasure to enjoy the night sky without excess light pollution. I welcome the town setting standards that create more of the common good. What some see as controlling individual behavior I see as providing for a community good that requires restraint and cooperation. We all benefit from the result.
Portola Valley residents experienced home invasions as well as robberies and burglaries. There have been none reported by the SMC sheriff’s office subsequent to the ALPR installation completion.
PVR: so the definitions of the words “suburb” or “rural” change according to the geographical area under discussion? That sounds like a way for you to pretend you don’t live in a suburb by modifying the language to fit your argument. Nice try.
Night Walker —
How sad that you think you are experiencing the night sky without excess light pollution. Have you never been in, for example, the Sierras? What you see in PV is a tiny fraction of the stars visible outside suburbia.
Drive to Windy Hill some night and look down on the bay. Your screwing around counting residential lumens with what is being thrown up by cities only a few miles away is a ludicrous waste of time. PV and Woodside residential lighting guidelines accomplish NOTHING.
Ah the light police…..I can hear the 9-1-1 calls now — my neighbor’s lights are on