Jason Kopp

Good evening. This ordinance before you tonight, 2026-15. Uh, the proposed ordinance establishes standards for exterior lighting within the city of Dover, prevents excessive or unreasonable lighting, glare, and illuminate illumination, and light trespass. The ordinance requires exterior lighting to be installed, maintained, and operated in a manner that minimizes its impact on adjacent properties and public rights-of-way. These amendments provide a specific regulatory framework for addressing lighting-related complaints and violations while establishing clear standards intended to prevent excessive lighting, glare, and light trespass from adversely affecting neighboring properties. This ordinance before you is, um, a result of several complaints regarding nuisance lighting, uh, in particular, lights blasting into

So this specific ordinance, uh, would not address a business. There is current legislation or is current, uh, current ordinance in the zoning code that would prevent a business from doing this very thing. It's very specific to businesses. Um, unfortunately, the zoning code does not cover residential, which is why this ordinance comes to light. This is This ordinance would cover residential to residential, but for that particular situation, for a commercial zoning, zoning would...

It It could be a violation. Um, the the parameters of that ordinance are very particular. It So, um, I don't have it in front of me to to quote, but it is, uh, very particular, uh, in that ordinance. So, even without this, that could potentially be a violation depending on the circumstances.

Yeah, and very good question. So there, uh, in this ordinance, it talks about shielding and, you know, light glare. So if you have spotlights in your yard, if you adjust them to a way where it's not beaming into your neighbor's house, there won't be a problem. There Yes, there might be some residual light that shines into a window, but this is more particularly a spotlight glaring into a window. Uh, that's the complaint we're getting, and, uh, not investigating in the capacity of code enforcement, but I've seen it personally myself where a light is shining directly into a bedroom window. It's an issue. I, um, actually have, I think I said this once to many, 12 sets of spotlights around my property. They're aimed in a way where it's not affecting neighbors by any means, so it illuminates every square inch of, uh, both my front and backyard, to prevent, uh, any kind of intruders. So it is possible to use these lights effectively without, uh, hindering the neighbors.

Um, that's something we could easily, I can reach out to Delaware Electric, make them aware of that, and see if there's anything they can do to adjust it. Um, that's usually how we handle situations like that, where somebody complains about a spotlight. Uh, we reach out to see if there's anything they can do to adjust it in any way to prevent that from happening, since it is a city-maintained light.

100%, yes. Uh, this will be complaint-driven. One of the ways we can attend is we work after hours to attend, uh, different meetings, various meetings. We'll try to incorporate as much of best of code enforcement as we can during that time, to make sure we're not, uh, adding extra payroll, but we're not going to be, you know, out routine looking for, uh, spotlights if we don't have a complaint.

I don't want to speak on behalf of the electric department, but I can, uh, follow up and see what I can get for that, and, uh, let you know.

That would be a case-by-case basis. Um, although it's not going to be very common, what we what we're addressing, uh, and as we get a complaint, we'll assess. Can we pair it up with a meeting? We go to a lot of evening meetings that are at night. Uh, that would be the ideal time to assess it. And then, if like anything else, if somebody disagrees with our interpretation, there is the appeals board. Uh, but we are going to try to do our due diligence. Just like any complaint we receive, some, a complaint may not be justified, and it may not be as serious as somebody thinks it is. Um, the goal here is to be able to educate and reach out to people and discuss, hey, can you just turn a light here or there. Just like anything else we do, it won't escalate so. Um, sometimes it may just be, um, somebody doesn't realize it's causing that impact on a neighbor. With this ordinance, we can at least get a letter out, and once people are made aware of it, hey, it is impacting them, more make effort to correct it.

Yes, so this is very similar language to Kent County, just tailored to the city of Dover. Uh, I think we used a lot of language and just tweaked it a little bit to make it, uh, make feasible here.