Target practice on the streets

By Mike Trask (contact)

Wednesday, Oct. 18, 2006 | 7:26 a.m.

Some kids in Boulder City appear to have a new weekend hobby - using a pellet gun to shoot out streetlights with sniperlike precision.

No one is more bothered by the vandalism than Terry Askew, the city worker who has to repair the damage each week.

Normal maintenance on the city's roughly 2,200 streetlights is time-consuming enough to keep the 58-year-old Askew busy. But for the past several weeks, the weekend vandals - assumed by authorities to be youths, although there is no conclusive evidence of that - have been making his life more complicated.

"It's kind of discouraging when there are 50 or 60 of them shot out," Askew said. "Then you fix them and they are shot out again the next weekend."

Over the past two months, about 120 lights have been damaged, costing the city an estimated $6,500 - and costing Askew a big chunk of his workweek.

The lights that have been shot out are about 30 feet high, and each takes between 30 minutes and an hour to change.

Askew, who for most of his 19 years for the city has been a one-man streetlight repair crew, said he dreams of one day retiring to Montana with his wife, LuAnn, and spending his hours fishing. He also dreams of the city putting all streetlights on a central control, allowing one switch to simultaneously turn on 50 lights. Currently, the lights are individual sodium-vapor bulbs of varying strength that automatically turn on at dusk.

But in the meantime, he dreams of a cease-fire on the streetlights. There were no attacks last weekend, and Askew's taking that as a good sign.

Police have no leads on the culprits.

The vandalism has occurred along Adams Boulevard and on several sections of Veterans Memorial Drive.

"I don't know who's doing it," city spokeswoman Rose Ann Miele said. "But if I did, I would strangle them."

Askew, who has three grown children and four grandchildren, isn't calling for a public flogging or even a tough punishment for whomever's behind the vandalism, despite the extra work and aggravation it has caused.

"We were all kids at one time," he said, removing a hard hat and uncovering his white hair.

"It's a lot of money. But I don't think they should go to jail or anything. Maybe their parents should have to pay some restitution or something. Let the parents take care of it."

With that, Askew climbed back in his white truck and headed off. Because with or without vandals, there always are streetlight bulbs to change in Boulder City.