Tennis court lights seem wasteful to neighbor

A month ago, we wrote about Dan Kennedy, who complained that the ball field lights are left on all night at least three nights a week for sporting events at Wake Forest-Rolesville Middle School.

That brought an e-mail message from Maurice Courie, who lives behind North Hills Park in Raleigh. He said he, too, has to deal with lights left on at the tennis court there.

And he was a little cynical about the problem getting fixed.

"Good luck with getting our wasteful park people to do anything about lights," he said.

The lights near his house, he said, "are on during the winter when the temp is in the 20s or less. The lights are supposedly on a timer. I have finally quit calling to report the lights on after years of frustration. If all the park lights are managed so irresponsibly, some changes are in order."

We hear you, Mr. Courie.

So we called David Bell, tennis director for Raleigh Parks and Recreation.

Courie is correct, Bell said, that the lights are on a timer --and that's the problem.

"There's only three or four parks out of the 25 that are on a timer system, and North Hills Park is one of them," he said. "The parks are trying to get them all on 'push button' because we know it's an issue."

The timer turns the lights on in the winter months (November though March) at 7 p.m. and turns them off at 10 p.m. whether or not people are playing, Bell said.

But, we have good news for Courie. Bell said the city has hired a new employee who is in charge of fixing the problem.

"It's on our priority list," to make the lights manual, Bell said.