SANDPOINT — In the past, trees downtown were strung with festive lighting for the holiday season through the now defunct Business Improvement District. In addition, the city Parks and Recreation staff have traditionally done the tree lighting at Jeff Jones Town Square and along Second Avenue.

Since the BID was dissolved just over a year ago, the city has developed an updated downtown holiday lighting plan with a conversion to LED lighting for energy conservation.

"We have a plan outlined that we are decorating almost all of the streets downtown this year with the LEDs," said City Administrator Jennifer Stapleton during Wednesday's City Council meeting.

City crews will be installing LED lights on all of the downtown trees with available power identified in the first phase of the plan this year. Installation will begin this month in conjunction with tree trimming. The first phase includes Church and Cedar streets between First and Fifth avenues, as well as some of the cross streets, such as Second Avenue and select areas of Third and Fourth. The trees on First Avenue will be lit with remaining incandescent lights from previous years due to the fact that the trees will be removed and replaced next year as part of the downtown revitalization project.

The LED lights can typically remain in the trees for three years before they need to be replaced, Stapleton said.

"This allows us to use the same amount of staff resources that we have traditionally been using to put lights up and then go back and take lights down, to kind of have a phased approach over a three-year period and get further lighting downtown at the same cost," Stapleton said.

The second phase of lighting will begin next fall as several of the areas identified don't currently have power working at the tree wells, or need to be reconfigured due to safety concerns. Electrical work will occur next summer in preparation for light installation.

The lighting effort was among several announcements made by Stapleton on Wednesday. Other announcements included some of the upcoming workshop topics, such as special events and sidewalks.

Staff will also come back to council later in the fall with a final presentation for a decision on turf options at War Memorial Field. In advance of that, she said, staff is working on a public information piece as there has been some misinformation in the community about the options. The information will be out in the next week to 10 days. There will not likely be additional meetings on the topic, save for the final decision by council, she said, as there have been several public meetings and a citizen advisory committee working on it.

"We are looking at how we might be able to leverage our Open Town Hall functionality for some dialogue and answering questions on this," Stapleton said.

Open Town Hall is an online platform for public involvement in different issues and decisions within the city.

Mary Malone can be reached by email at mmalone@bonnercountydailybee.com and follow her on Twitter @MaryDailyBee.