Light 'Em Up

Well, it's about damn time.

Worcester had a special Lighting Ordinance meeting on April 2nd, in which they changed the Lighting Ordinance to help facilitate the Methacton High School getting lights on the football field. Which, to be honest, should have been done years ago, and shouldn't have been an issue coming into the new millennium. But here we are, in 2013.

However, this new ordinance isn't the White Knight that the pro-light crowd has been hoping for. The lights are limited to 85 feet high, which kind of goes against the belief that the higher the light posts, the more you can concentrate them onto the field train of thought. However, Worcester will bring in an independent lighting contractor to review any plans of football field lightage that Methacton brings to the table.

Another bone I have to pick with this ordinance is the whole "you have to paint the poles" clause. Really, the concern is glare coming off of the metal of the poles. Really? As someone who drives past Redtail Park, whose baseball field has lights--and unpainted metal poles, I never got so much glare from the poles that I crashed into oncoming traffic. Or even enough to say "hey, those poles are really reflective!" Really, it's more like PENNDot putting in new crash guard rails. Ignoring the fact that painting metal is expensive (estimates at the meetings did range to $50,000, which is money coming out of everyone's taxes), painting metal black is a really great way of making it absorb heat, and Methacton's football field is in the middle of nowhere, so to speak. Thanks Worcester.

One of the supervisors for Worcester who ran for re-election did say they would work with Methacton to get lights on the football field, and I guess this is a good start, but it's more of "we're doing this because we have to--no one wants to" and coupled with Methacton's "we want it so we're gonna get it" mindset, this is going to take years, even though the board is trying to rush the $5,000,000 bond they need to shove the turf field project down everyone's throats.

But all in all this is a good step, even if Worcester disagrees with me. I was in Orbisonia, Pennsylvania a couple of years ago with my girlfriend's family. This was about a two hour drive up the Turnpike, past Hershey. It was one of those places that you had to drive for ten minutes just to get someplace, and it's sure more rural than Worcester likes to think it is. Their high school had lights on their football field. If a school in such a backwater area (and I mean no offense to any residents of Orbisonia/Rockhill Furnace) had lights on a football field, why are we still forcing every other school to spend a Saturday morning at our stadium? Why is it so hard for Methacton to have Friday Night football games--then maybe Friday Night Lights would make more sense to us?

Lights will be coming in the next couple of years--let's just hope that turf field isn't saddled along with it.