As part of funding given to Bakersfield College by the passage of California Proposition 39 back in 2013, the current bulbs in the light poles around BC are being replaced by new LED lights.

Jim Coggins, the manager of Maintenance and Operations at BC, says it’s a race against the clock to install these bulbs because the funding for this portion of the refit operation ends after the spring semester.

“The whole campus will be done this year, all the pole lights,” said Coggins. “We have to have this completely finished by June 13. If we don’t have this done by then, we lose the funding.”

Already lights have been replaced around the campus near Haley Street, the library and the administration parking lot, and Coggins says that a second crew has been brought on to help speed up the work.

He said that the new LED lights are cheaper and easier to maintain, as well as providing more light.

“It’s a brighter light, plus it’s like half of the cost to run, and the life expectancy of the bulb is four to five times more than a bulb we use now,” he said. “So we shouldn’t have any issue with maintenance for quite a while.”

Prop 39 gives BC around $1 million over the course of five years to fix the lights, which will help modernize BC’s light infrastructure.

“This is the first phase of a five-year plan. Next year, in the second phase, what we plan on getting into is the soffit lights on the exterior of the campus, on all the buildings, and we’ll get those all changed out with an LED,” Coggins said. “Then hopefully we can get into some the energy management systems and tying in all these lights into that system, then everything can be controlled with programs, including the lights at the stadium.”