EVANS CITY — LED bulbs help light the streets — and could lighten taxpayers' burden.

One possibility for the 2020 annual budget, according to Borough Council President Lee Dyer, is to introduce a half-mill decrease in the streetlight tax, which he said would lower the overall tax burden by about $5,000.

The change stems from a move made by the borough's electric company to install LEDs in Evans City streetlights to replace the incandescent bulbs at no cost to the borough. Dyer said the effects were felt immediately. “Last year, our auditor suggested that we reduce that tax,” he added.

In 2018, the borough levied more than $21,000 in streetlight taxes, according to data on its website. Calculations show a half-mill tax cut would lower the borough's revenue by more than $4,700 annually.

After the borough's auditor suggested lowering the tax last year, the decision had been thrown around by council as a possibility. The savings being confirmed in 2019 allowed council to take the step to propose the tax cut, Dyer said.

“We realized the savings in the year before and made sure they were true in this year before we enacted the tax deduction,” he said.

Dyer said one goal of the borough in reducing the tax was to make the streetlights revenue-neutral.

“It's a reduction in their tax costs and a reduction in our expense costs,” he said. “So, it's a wash.”

The U.S. Department of Energy cites numerous benefits to LED street lighting, including the ability to adjust the level of illumination and to reduce the amount of light emitted into the night sky, unlike old-fashioned sodium lights. It also notes that modern LED bulbs can be adjusted to emit less blue, or short-wave, light than earlier forms of the technology.

For Evans City, those upsides combine with the energy savings to provide a benefit to the community, Dyer said. He added the lower cost of lighting also has an ecological side-effect. “From a conservation point of view, LED saves energy, and that's obviously a positive thing,” he said.