Wabash, Indiana

from its population of 3,800. One witness, present that evening, wrote the following: “The strange, weird light, exceeded in power only by the sun yet mild as moonlight, rendered the Court House square as light as midday.” Today the population of Wabash is approximately 10,200 and its old electric lights are being replaced by LEDs, according to Mayor Scott A. Long. “Since taking office, one of my first goals was to look down the path of energy savings,” he recounts. “I grew up the child of a manager of a rural electric cooperative, so I was taught at an early age to turn the lights out if you’re not in a room. And technology has changed in such a way that we now have energy-saving capabilities that we didn’t have in the past. So, we retrofitted all of our city buildings with LED lighting to reduce energy consumption; and we took that program to our street lighting. We have decorative street lights, downtown; we swapped those bulbs out to LED. And with any future street light installations, we’ll make sure that the power company installs LED lighting throughout the city wherever we can. WABASH , INDI ANA Now, that’s going to be a long, arduous process, because you don’t often change your streetlights out. But, those were some of my initial goals and we’ve made great strides in doing that.” Long, who was born in Wabash, returned to the city after seven years in the military. In 1994, he was hired by the local police department and spent the next 21 years as a police officer, as well as 16 years on the City Council. “So I had a little bit of knowledge about the city prior to being elected mayor,” he says. “I think it gave me a leg up on knowing the whole city, including the areas that most people don’t know about; neighborhoods that I saw as a police officer directly correlate to this job as a mayor and it gave me a little bit of insight when taking office. How can I fix the broken sidewalks? How can I deal with dilapidated properties and find ways to assist the homeowner in maintaining their property rather than go in with an order of demolition because it’s become an unsafe structure? So, that was also one of my goals. And it will save the taxpayers’ money in the long run because typically we’ll pay for an pictured Downtown Pocket Park from Small Business Revolution by Deluxe Corporation