MILFORD — The city’s Public Works Department recently partnered with Rep. Bryan Shupe, R-Milford, and his Community Transportation Funds to make the Matlinds Estates neighborhood entrance safer with a solar light.

In December 2019, the city was contacted by one of the community’s residents about a lack of lighting at the entrance along Cedar Creek Road.

After further investigation, the Public Works Department found no electric lines existed in the area, a news release stated.

Rep. Shupe contacted the city a few weeks later, indicating that CTF monies from the fiscal year 2020 bond bill could cover the cost.

Since security was the main concern, but no electricity source existed at or near the location, Public Works utilized the CTF to purchase solar lighting equipment from Florida Sol Systems Inc.

This March 15, the solar unit arrived and was installed on a pole erected by the city’s Electric Division at the entrance to Matlinds Estates. It has been in operation ever since.

“The project is quite a ‘feel good’ effort,” said Public Works Director Michael Svaby in the release. “The state’s CTF mechanism worked in the way it was intended and the outcome is a more secure entrance established by the city of Milford Public Works, using an environmentally-friendly lighting fixture.”

CTF was established in the mid-1980s by Delaware’s Bond Bill Committee to speed up the process of making relatively small local improvements, as well as put decision-making about priorities into the hands of each community’s state representative.

The representatives are given a fixed amount of funds annually, and they must be used on projects that have a transportation component, are on public property and benefit more than one individual, the release stated.